Find who? What was he talking about? Had he gone mad?
The rain came harder, blinding sheets of rain.
“Wish I had the time to take you below for a little while, but I don’t. The fuses are set and the Drum’s about ready to blow.” He looked at his watch.
She turned, got one foot up on the rail and jumped. She dived down at a crazy, twisted angle, and when she came up, a bullet pinged the water an inch from her head. She went under again. Down, down into the turquoise sea, trying to get away from the bullets that splattered the water, bullets that pinged close when she surfaced.
She dived down again and again, and when she came up, half-blinded by the rain, she saw that she was fifteen or twenty yards from the boat.
Suddenly, like a bomb going off, it blew, with a flash of fire, a great fireball and a terrible booming noise that reverberated across the water. Pieces of it shot up into the sky, wood and steel and bodies....
It hadn’t been a dream. It had happened. She remembered. God help her, she remembered it all.
“It would be better if you jumped,” Zachary Flynn said.
She looked at him, still caught in the picture unfolding in her mind.
“You jumped before,” he said. “From the boat that day. I thought you were dead. I thought I’d killed you, too. But then I saw in the paper that you’d been picked up by the coast guard and taken to Nassau. And that Luis had rushed to your side. How did that happen, Annabel? Why didn’t you drown?”
“I... I don’t know.”
He moved closer and she edged back toward the cliff. Back toward the edge.
“You were in the dinghy when they found you, the dinghy I’d put over the side to make my escape in. It must have come loose and somehow you managed to find it. I had to take the smaller one.” He smiled. “Much like the one I have hidden back in one of the sea caves. That’s how I’ll get out of here tonight, after I’m finished with you.”
He took another step toward her.
Fear knotted her throat. “You’ll never get away with this,” she whispered.
“Won’t I? I got away with killing the Croydens, didn’t I? You were my only loose thread and now I’m going to take care of you. Tonight I’ll slip away into the darkness and no one will ever know that I’m alive.”
Another step. Closer. Closer.
She looked behind her, down, down to the terrible rush of water, down to the rocks.
“It’s all over,” he said.
“Oh, please,” she whispered.
“Goodbye,” he said.
Chapter 14
Luis stood ankle-deep in the water of the sea cave and shone his light up on the rock ledge above his head. He saw something shining up there and with a muttered “What in the hell...” he looked closer. And saw the dive tank. Dive tank!
He handed the light to Samuel, found a foothold in the rocks and heaved himself up for a better look. Alongside the tank there were a mask, flippers, a buoyancy vest, weight belt and compressor. He pulled the tank out and handed it down to Samuel. It was in good shape, not rusted. The flippers and other equipment looked almost new.
“Lord, Lord.” Samuel rolled his eyes. “Somebody be in here, boss. Keepin’ their stuff here. Hidin’ when the tide be high, maybe even stayin’ way back and breathin’ with the tank.”
Luis flashed the light around the walls of the cave. There was another ledge. He climbed up. It held a deflated rubber raft, candles, canned food, beef jerky, granola bars. A coil of rope. A box of bullets. Por Dios! Bullets!
This was where the man who had already made two attempts on Annabel’s life had been hiding. He was here on the island. His island. With a growl of fury and a premonition of fear unlike anything he had ever experienced before, Luis jumped down and hurried out of the cave, where two of his men waited.
“Spread out,” he cried. “The bastard we’re after has been holing up here in the cave. I want two men on guard but out of sight. When he comes back, grab him. If you can’t grab him, kill him.”
To Samuel he said, “Get the men from the village. I want everybody—”
“Boss.” Samuel’s voice was low, barely above a whisper. He was looking up, his eyes round, scared. “Boss,” he said. “Up there.”
Luis looked up. And froze. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Annabel... Oh my God, Annabel was up there on the edge of the cliff. And a man, advancing on her, a man with a gun in his hand.
Dios! Ay Dios! He felt as if his heart were being torn from him, helpless because he was here and she was up there with a madman. He reached for his gun, aimed, ready to fire, and hesitated. What if he missed? God help him, what if he hit Annabel?
“Dios. Dios, ayúdame. God, oh God...help me.”
He cried aloud, a cry that seemed to come from his very soul. “Annabel! Annabel!”
She turned and looked down, wavering on the edge. It was too late, he couldn’t save her. Annabel, his life, his love.
Luis! Too late. Too late. Nothing would save her now. Not Luis, not anyone. She whispered his name, she whispered a prayer. “Now I lay me... The Lord is my shepherd... If I should die before I wake...”
This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be happening. She watched Flynn’s finger tighten on the trigger and closed her eyes.
Suddenly there was a low growl, a rush of air. She opened her eyes and saw Rob, fangs bared, a dark and vengeful figure hurling straight for Zachary Flynn’s throat.
Flynn, eyes wide with terror, mouth agape, backed to the edge of the cliff, hands up to try to fight off the big black dog.
Rob sprang. Sharp teeth fastened on the man’s throat and hung on. Hung on as man and dog went over the edge. Flynn’s arms windmilled out, flailing the air. And he screamed. Oh God, how he screamed.
Sickness rose in Annabel’s throat. The ground tilted. She sank to her knees. No one could survive a fall like that to the rocks below. Not Zachary Flynn. Not Rob.
Shaking with reaction, sobs racking her body, she lay there on the stony ground at the edge of the cliff, sobbing as if her heart would break. As indeed it had.
Luis found her there. She had stopped crying and lay quite still. He knelt beside her and pulled her into his arms. “It’s over,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
She looked at him without answering.
“Annabel,” he said. “Querida, it’s over. The man who was after you is dead.”
“Zachary Flynn.”
“Yes, but how—”
“Rob?” she said. “Is Rob...?”
“He was a brave and wonderful dog, Annabel. He saved your life.” He brushed the hair back from her face. “His back was broken. I had to put him down. I’m sorry.”
He tightened his arms around her then and she said, in a voice as cold as ice, “Let me go.”
Shock, he told himself. She’s in shock.
She started to get up, and when he reached to help her, she said, “No,” and pulled away from him.
“Annabel, what is it? What—”
Moses ran into the clearing, crying, “Little missus be all right?”
“Yes,” Luis said, but he was looking at Annabel. “Yes,” he called out, “she’s all right.”
Moses hurried forward. “That man be dead, missus. He don’t be botherin’ you no more. Imagine he be hiding down there in one of those caves. Mr. Luis found everything—a dive tank, food, even a rubber raft. Imagine that!”
“I’m glad it’s over,” she said. “I... I’d like to get back to the house now.”
“Me ‘n’ Mr. Luis, we get you there. You rest some, you be feeling better in no time. I be mighty sorry about Rob. That dog be some kind of hero.”
“Yes, I know. If it hadn’t been for him...” And because she knew if she thought about Rob right now she wouldn’t be able to stand it, Annabel turned away from the cliff and, with Moses on one side and Luis on the other, walked back to the clearing.
When they reached the house, Luis helped her into her bedroom. She lay on the
chaise, silent and pale. He went into the bathroom and came out with a washcloth and a towel. He wiped her face and her hands and, when he finished, said, “Would you like some tea? A drink?”
“No, thank you.” She looked at him. “I know,” she said. “I remember.”
“What...what do you mean?”
“I’m not your wife. We’re not married.”
“Annabel—”
“We haven’t been for almost six years.”
“I wanted to tell you. I was going to tell you.”
“When? Before or after you made me love you again?”
“Annabel...” He gripped her arms. “Listen to me. You’ve got to listen to me.”
“It was because of the Cantamar, wasn’t it? You thought because I was on the Distant Drum with Zachary Flynn that maybe I knew where the Cantamar was. That’s why you brought me back to San Sebastián.”
He looked at her, and remembered the day six weeks ago when the news came over the shortwave that a pleasure craft had exploded in the Bahamas and that a man by the name of Zachary Flynn had been aboard. The only survivor, according to the report, had been a young woman who, because of a bad concussion, had no memory of who she was. They’d described her: approximate age, twenty-eight or -nine; height, five foot four; weight, about one-fifteen; blond hair, blue eyes. And he’d known, somehow he’d known it was Annabel.
He’d chartered a plane and flown to Nassau. He still remembered walking into her room at the hospital, standing over her bed, and the terrible effort to hold back his tears. Her head had been bandaged. There were bruises on her face and cuts on her arm. He’d felt, oh God, a love unlike anything be had ever known. In that moment he would willingly have given his life for her. He wanted to gather her in his arms, to tell her how much he loved her, and that always and forever he would take care of her.
Yes, later, the thought, the suspicion had come that if she had been on the boat with Zachary Flynn, she might know the location of the Cantamar. But in the days that followed, in the days when he fell in love with Annabel all over again, the suspicion faded. Annabel was here with him, and that’s all that mattered.
He had to tell her that, tell her that all that mattered to him now was their love. But before he could, she said, “Finding the Cantamar means that much to you, doesn’t it? So much that you’d pretend I was still your wife. You made love to me...” Her voice broke, and she couldn’t go on.
“It wasn’t that way,” he said, desperate to have her believe him. “All right, maybe...maybe when I first heard about the Drum blowing up and that Flynn had been on board, yes, maybe I thought then that you might have been working with him. But when I saw you in the hospital, all that mattered was that you had been hurt. And that I loved you.
“I love you, Annabel,” he said, his voice husky. “I never stopped loving you.”
She turned her face away. “Please,” she said, “Just...just leave me alone.”
And he knew he had lost her.
Annabel stayed alone in her room the rest of that day. That night she locked the door connecting her room with Luis’s. When he knocked and said, “We have to talk,” she answered, “Not now.”
He had lied to her—all this time, lying together in bed, making love. He’d lied when he brought her here to San Sebastián as his wife. But she wasn’t his wife; she hadn’t been for a long time.
Later that night, when the house became quiet and she heard no sound from the adjoining room, she went out onto her balcony and sat looking out at the sea. There, alone with the night, she let herself remember everything. She brought it all back, every bit of her life.
She remembered her parents, Emily and Richard Brandford, and the big white house on Oaklawn Street in Winston, Oregon, where she had grown up. She remembered the mulberry tree in the backyard, bird songs in springtime and the sound of the lawn mower under her bedroom window.
She remembered her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Vercamen. And friends: Shirley Lee Tacey, Meggie Dillon, Paula Detmer. She remembered high school and that in her sophomore year she had dated red-haired Eddie Loringer. She even remembered the first time they kissed, how nervous she’d been, how worried about noses and keeping her lips pressed tight together, because Dorothy Berlinger, her best friend who lived just down the block, had told her that all the boys wanted to put their tongue in your mouth, and that as far as Dorothy was concerned, that was really yucky.
She remembered her senior prom. George Berlinger, Dorothy’s older brother, asked her to the prom before Eddie had had a chance to, so she’d had to go with him. She hadn’t liked George all that much, and after the prom she’d had to hit him over the head with her purse to get away from him.
After high school she’d gone to Gonzaga University in Spokane on a partial scholarship. At the end of her first year there, her parents said they’d drive to Washington so she could take back all of her things. But they didn’t make it to Gonzaga; they were killed in a three-car pileup coming into Spokane.
She remembered the first time she had gone into the big white house alone, and how she had wandered from room to room, as though searching for her parents. In their bedroom she stood for a long time looking at their wedding picture. They were smiling at each other, just the way they’d smiled at each other all through their marriage.
She sold the house in Winston, and when Dorothy, who was living in Miami and going to the U of M, suggested Annabel come to Florida, she packed her bags and headed south.
She and Dorothy moved into an apartment in the Art Deco part of South Beach—even if it was too far from the university—and traveled back and forth in the car Annabel had bought with part of the money from the sale of her parents’ home.
The following year Dorothy met David Goldman, a New Orleans attorney, and when Mardi Gras came around, David invited both young women to come to New Orleans for a dance some of the city’s elite put on every year.
That’s where she met Luis.
He’d cut in on the man she’d been dancing with and swept her into his arms. He was nine years older than she was, smart, well traveled and sophisticated. She’d been impressed out of her twenty-one-year-old mind.
His name was Luis Miguel Alarcon, he told her. He had been born in Spain, educated at the University of Salamanca, and though he loved Spain, he preferred living in the Bahamas. He lived on an island, San Sebastián, and he was in New Orleans on business.
He insisted she sit beside him at dinner. He poured her wine and buttered her roll. When a crumb stuck to her lower lip he stroked it away with his thumb. And holding her with his eyes, he said, “As soon as you grow up, I’m going to marry you, Miss Annabel Brandford.”
“I...I’m twenty-one,” she’d stammered. Then blushed because that sounded as if she could hardly wait.
He took her back to David’s parents’ house that night. He walked her to the door and he kissed her.
Strange, she thought now, how strange that she would still remember that kiss. A man’s kiss, not a boy’s, and the arms that held her had been a man’s arms. It thrilled her, it frightened her. As he did. Because he was older and foreign and experienced.
He asked if he could see her the following day. She’d said no, she had plans, because she was just a little bit afraid of him. He’d called anyway, called every day she was in New Orleans. Finally, the night before she left, she agreed to have dinner with him.
He took her to Antoine’s, a restaurant more elegant than any she’d ever seen. He ordered in French—les escargots à la Bordelaise. She didn’t know until after they were married that she’d eaten snails. Fonds d’artichauts and chateaubriand pour deux. Pink champagne before dinner, white wine with the escargots, red with the chateaubriand. And finally café brûlot, which, Luis had told her, was a New Orleans tradition and every bit as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.
She was overwhelmed, out of her league, scared to death and giddy from the wine.
After dinner they listened to jazz at Preserv
ation Hall. When they left, she thought he would take her back to the Goldman house, but instead he drove out to Lake Pontchartrain. They parked along the seawall and he said, “I want to see you again.”
“But I’m going back to Miami tomorrow.”
“Then I’ll see you there.” He put his arm around her shoulders to bring her closer, and when he kissed her, she didn’t try to move away. She was filled with wine and warmth and feelings she had never experienced before.
He said, “Part your lips for me,” and when she did, he touched his tongue to hers. It wasn’t at all yucky, as Dorothy had told her it would be. It thrilled her, excited her.
He touched her breasts, but when she closed her hand over his wrist and said, “Don’t,” he stopped.
“I told you the first night we met that I was going to marry you, Annabel.” He tilted her chin so that she looked into his eyes. “Make no mistake about it, I will.” Then he’d kissed her again. And this time when he touched her breasts, she let him.
He came to Miami a few days after she went back. They dated every night for three weeks, and every one of those nights he asked her to marry him.
He bought her a wedding ring, a circlet of diamonds as bright as teardrops in the sun, and on a hot summer’s day they were married in front of a judge at city hall.
They spent their wedding night at the Fontainebleu Hotel. It wasn’t a happy experience. She was too nervous, he too impatient. She had expected skyrockets to go off, but not the pain. He had expected and had gotten a virgin, yet seemed disappointed that she was so inept.
The next day he took her to some of the finest shops in Miami Beach, but instead of letting her choose the clothes she liked, he selected everything for her.
“You look like a child half the time,” he said. “You’re a woman now, you need to look a bit more sophisticated.”
Though she felt strange in some of the dresses she was sure were too old for her, she really didn’t mind. She’d been on her own for the two years since her parents had died, and she liked being taken care of this way.
And she was in love, hopelessly, wonderfully in love. She wanted to please him, to be everything he wanted her to be. She told herself that if he seemed a little controlling it was because he loved her. He was Spanish, he had been brought up in a different society than she had, a society where women, especially young women, were looked after this way by their husbands. It amused her that he wouldn’t let her wear a low-cut sundress or a bathing suit that he said was too revealing.
Long-Lost Wife? Page 16
