by Joanna Wayne
Maybe it was time someone did uncover the secrets that held Cape Diablo in this paralyzing time warp. Time for the island to be washed clean of the sinister elements that held it in a bony grasp.
But unloose the secrets and the truth might destroy them all.
JACI TOOK OFF HER SHOES when she reached the beach, and walked along the shore, wary of the jellyfish that sometimes washed onto the sand. An occasional wave lapped her feet, and she tingled from its invigorating coolness.
The beach walk was the perfect balm for her rattled nerves. Mac’s death had left her edgy and confused. And Raoul totally perplexed her. He could be so darn nice one minute, a controlling ogre the next.
Worse, she had trouble controlling her own emotions when she was with him. All she should be thinking about was how to placate him and get information from him. Instead, she’d lost her temper.
It was as if some kind of weird, combustive chemical reaction transpired when they were together.
“Pilar. Reyna.”
Jaci stopped dead still as the names of the Santiago children wafted around her on a ghostly breeze.
She turned slowly, scanning the moonlit beach until she saw movement a few yards to her right. Alma, in her white flowing dress. But she wasn’t dancing. She was pacing back and forth in front of the sand dunes.
If she’d noticed Jaci at all, she’d evidently chosen to ignore her. Jaci considered doing the same. She’d done enough research for one day.
“Pilar? Where are you?”
The call sent an icy finger up Jaci’s spine. Alma really had lost it. Crazy, Raoul had said, but not nec essarily harmless. Yet the frail, silver-haired woman in white certainly didn’t look dangerous tonight.
If anything, she looked as hauntingly lost as her voice sounded. It seemed cruel to leave her to wander the beach at night in such a tormented state.
Jaci started walking toward her. “Hi, Alma. It’s me, Jaci Matlock. I’m staying in the courtyard apartment.”
“What are you doing out here so late?”
The woman’s voice slurred as if she’d been drinking, but there was no odor of liquor on her breath.
“I’ve been out on the boat today and I’m walking back to my room.”
“You were on the boat with Andres, weren’t you?” She sounded angry and maybe a little hurt.
“I was with Raoul.”
“You lie. You were with Andres.”
“No. Andres isn’t here. It’s getting late,” Jaci said, holding out her hand. “Walk back to the house with me. We can talk about Andres on the way.”
Alma pushed her hand away. “You are lying, and you have to be punished.”
And that’s when Jaci saw the gleam of the knife clutched in Alma’s right hand, the blade pointing at Jaci’s heart.
Chapter Seven
Jaci stepped back slowly. “Throw the knife down, Alma, before you hurt someone.”
“Andres won’t like it when I tell him what you’ve done.” The older woman waved her hand, swinging the curved blade through the air as if it were a machete.
Jaci stood her ground, but was ready to run if it came to that. She wanted no part of a fight with an unbalanced woman wielding a knife. “Andres isn’t here,” she said again, working to keep her voice calm, though she was anything but.
“Don’t lie to me.” Alma raised the knife, than began to sway, almost imperceptibly at first, but gaining momentum until she resembled a young palm in the breeze. She moaned softly, then opened her hands, palms up, in front of her, not seeming to notice when the knife dropped from her shaking fingers.
Jaci kicked at the weapon, and it flew a few yards before burrowing into the sand. Alma pressed her temples with the tips of her fingers as if she were dizzy or in pain.
The swaying stopped, and the woman dropped her hands to her sides, her shoulders slumped as if in defeat. Jaci slipped her arms around her thin shoulders, understanding now why the poor woman spent her days staring out the window. She was searching for a sign that her young charges of so many years ago would return.
A second later Alma’s body grew rigid, and she pulled away from Jaci. “You must leave Cape Diablo at once,” she ordered. “You have no business here.”
“Why should I leave?”
“Because…” She turned away and dropped her voice to a shaky whisper. “Because if you stay too long, Diablo will steal your soul.”
Alma turned and started walking away, her loose white gown billowing in the wind. She didn’t head toward the villa, but toward the boathouse.
Jaci watched until she disappeared from sight. Jaci wasn’t worried that her soul would be stolen, but did wonder if Alma had lost her grip slowly, losing her mind to overwhelming guilt. Or had she witnessed something so horrifying that one bloody night that it had driven her suddenly and irreversibly mad?
The wind picked up and Jaci felt a chill clear down to her bones. But she wouldn’t be seduced by the island’s history or its dark atmosphere. It was long past time for Cape Diablo to give up its carefully guarded secrets.
She planned to make certain that it did.
RAOUL WAITED UNTIL CARLOS had gotten rid of Alma before straddling one of the straight-backed chairs and joining him at the kitchen table. He dreaded getting into this discussion, but it seemed only right that he level with his uncle. “I have some information you might be interested in.”
Carlos looked up from the newspaper he was reading, his expression guarded. “You sound serious.”
“Nothing big, but since you seem to have made friends with Jaci, I thought you might like to know what brought her to Cape Diablo.”
“Don’t tell me she’s another one of those writers here to make up a bunch of bull about the Santiagos and call it a story.”
“Not exactly.” Raoul explained about her project, omitting the fact that the man she’d had an appointment with today was dead. Carlos didn’t interrupt, but his occasional grunts and guffaws made his displeasure clear.
“What does she think she’ll find that no one else has?”
“I don’t know.”
“Unless she can make evidence out of thin air and a bunch of sand, she’s wasting her time.”
“Right. So I wouldn’t worry about her.”
“She doesn’t seem like a student. I took her for a grown woman.”
“She’s a graduate student,” Raoul said, hoping to get off the subject of Jaci as quickly as possible.
Carlos wasn’t ready to drop it. “Ever since they aired that stupid TV show describing the island as haunted, it seems that half the people who come are just here to find ghosts or dig into the past.”
“I guess I missed that special.”
“You were lucky. It was bunk.”
“How did you see it?” Raoul asked. He knew there was no television on the island.
“I didn’t. I just heard about it. They interviewed some crackpots who said they’d had strange experiences on the island. I’ll bet you a dollar most of them had never even been here.”
“I don’t think the TV show has anything to do with Jaci’s visit.”
“But she’s still here to poke around in things that are none of her business. And she had the gall to ask me to take her fishing!”
He was as mad as Raoul had ever seen him. That couldn’t be good for a man in his condition. “It would be nice to know what really happened that night. At least it would give you and Alma some closure.”
“I’m not looking for closure, and I’m tired of these people coming here asking me questions and upsetting the señora. It’s our island, and they’ve ruined it for us. We may as well just leave and give Andres’s island completely over to the drug runners.”
The conversation was making Carlos more upset by the second. It probably wasn’t the best time for Raoul to mention his own reasons for being here, but he wasn’t likely to get a better opening than the one his uncle had just thrown out.
Raoul had given this a lot of thought, and the
most straightforward approach seemed the best, and likely the only one he could pull off. He leaned in closer. “You know, Carlos, that’s not such a bad idea. There comes a time when a man needs to let go of the hassles.”
The older man pushed back from the table. “What are you talking about?”
“I think it’s time for you to leave Cape Diablo.”
His remark was met with silence and an icy stare. Not quite the reaction Raoul had hoped for, but better than having his uncle yell and order him off the island.
“You admit things aren’t great here,” Raoul said.
“This is my home.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
Carlos stiffened. “I don’t know what this is about, Raoul, but don’t go walking down a path you don’t know.”
“Sometimes a path gets too rocky for anyone to walk.”
“Mine’s not…yet.”
“That’s not the way I heard it,” Raoul said, knowing he’d gone too far to turn back now.
“Then you heard wrong.” Carlos stood and walked to the door to his bedroom. “I’ll get my things, and then I’m going up to the villa to get some sleep. I’ll be back in the morning. You can be here or not, but either way, that’s the last I want to hear about my leaving Cape Diablo.”
There was no putting it off any longer. It was clear Carlos wasn’t going to confide in him. “I talked to Dr. Young,” Raoul said. “I know about the cancer.”
His uncle flinched as if he’d been hit. “He had no business calling you.”
“It seems he did. I’m your next of kin.”
“I gave him that information in case of emergency.”
“According to Dr. Young, if you don’t go in for radiation therapy, you won’t see another fall. That constitutes an emergency in anyone’s book.”
Carlos brushed it off with a wave of his hand. “No one has any guarantees they’ll see another fall.”
“You have a chance with treatment. You can stay with me in Naples. I have plenty of room. You’ll have privacy, nursing care if you need it, and the doctor’s office is only a five-minute cab ride away.”
Carlos leaned against the door frame, the muscles in his face sagging so that for once he looked every one of his seventy-three years. “You’re a good guy, Raoul. I know you want to help, but you can’t. So just let it go. I’ll handle this my way.”
His voice fell to a gruff whisper, and when he’d finished, he ducked into the bedroom, closing the door behind him before Raoul had a chance to reply.
Raoul fought the urge to burst through the door and demand that his great-uncle listen to reason. His grandfather hadn’t had a chance against the heart attack that had taken him out years too soon, but Carlos did. All he had to do was leave Alma and this snake and mosquito infested island, and seek medical care.
The fact that Carlos would give up his life to stay here with that fruitcake Alma burned in Raoul’s gut like pure acid. He turned and stamped out of the boathouse, not stopping until he’d climbed onto the deck of his boat.
He stood at the helm, wishing he could start the engines and escape back to the mainland. He stayed there until his thoughts shifted from Carlos to Jaci.
She’d been tough, had dealt with the suicide and finding Mac Lowell’s body like a pro. Yet she had a softer, far more vulnerable side, too. He’d seen it in her eyes and heard it in her voice when he’d first found her in Mac Lowell’s house, and then again on the boat coming back to Cape Diablo.
She was stubborn, and obsessed with Cape Diablo, so much so she’d never give up the project even if it did turn out to be dangerous for her.
But she was not his concern. That’s what he had to get clear in his mind. He was here for Carlos and nothing more.
Yet he couldn’t wipe her from his thoughts, and as he stood in the moonlight, he was attacked by feelings and urges that felt so out of place he had no idea what to do with them.
Finally, he went inside the cabin, undressed and climbed into bed. Sleep, as usual, was a long time in coming.
THE WATER SWIRLED AROUND RAOUL, dark and heavy, pushing him down and crushing the walls of his chest. He needed to get back to the surface, but he couldn’t, not until he located Allison. She had dived with him. She had to be here.
And then he saw her, floating near him in the thick, blue haze, laughing and motioning for him to follow her. He swam after her, but no matter how fast he stroked, the distance between them grew greater.
His lungs were on fire now, and the water was hardening to the consistency of mashed potatoes, slowing him down even more and making his muscles ache.
He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, she had disappeared.
Raoul woke with a jerk, part of him still lost in the nightmare that had left him in a cold sweat. Kicking back the sheets, he raked the damp hair from his forehead with clammy hands.
He tried to swallow, but the dryness in his mouth and throat made it difficult. He dragged himself to the kitchen and filled a glass with bottled water. He gulped it down quickly, then refilled the glass, drinking slowly this time, letting the liquid soothe his parched throat.
There was never any warning that the nightmare would hit, but he hadn’t expected it tonight, and certainly not so vivid. Not that the dream had been accurate. It never was. It was always a twisted version of the truth, his subconscious finding new ways to make him feel as totally useless and helpless as he’d been.
He’d thought himself invincible before that night, believed that he controlled everything he cared about. But all it took was one fatal mistake in judgment to make him realize just how human and fallible he really was.
“You didn’t die that day, Raoul. Take back your life. Do it for Allison and for yourself. Life is too precious to waste.”
Those had been his grandfather’s words to him on their last visit, two days before the old man had suffered the massive heart attack and died instantly. That had been six months ago.
Take back your life.
Emilio’s challenge rolled through Raoul’s mind the way it had so often over the half year. Easy to say. A lot harder to do. But if he didn’t take it back, he might wind up like Alma and Carlos, existing solely in the past, their lives stopped years ago like a clock on a sunken ship.
Raoul pulled on his jeans and sneakers, grabbed a flashlight and his windbreaker and left the boat. For once there was no sign of Tamale.
Once Raoul reached the sandy beach, he started to jog. Jogging was better than walking. It made it easier not to think. He ran until he neared the courtyard, then stopped, his mind consumed again with thoughts of Jaci—and his stomach churning with guilt.
Damn! No wonder the old nightmare had been so vivid tonight. He felt guilty for feeling any kind of attraction for another woman. It was irrational. Life had to go on. Wasn’t that what he’d just been telling Carlos?
Raoul kicked off his shoes, rolled up his pant legs and waded into the water. The sand collected between his toes, then washed away with the receding tide. He was almost knee-deep when he heard the scream and knew it had come from the direction of the courtyard.
Jaci.
He didn’t bother collecting his shoes before he took off at a dead run, his heart pumping like mad.
Chapter Eight
Impulsively, Jaci’s hand flew to her mouth in a failed attempt to stifle her scream. The body of the young boy was floating just below the surface of the murky pool, face up, grotesquely swollen.
The wind stirred the water, and the body seemed to dissolve momentarily before coalescing again a few feet away, in the deeper water.
Tamale growled, low and threatening, but now he’d moved from the edge of the pool and was crouched at her bare feet. A million frightening questions ran through her mind, while her stomach rolled in protest at the gruesome image. Who was the boy? Where had he come from? How long had his body been floating in the pool? Why had no one missed him?
Shock took a back seat to her training, and she
knelt to get a better look. The wind picked up, and shadows from the swaying palm fronds skulked across the scum, seemingly swallowing up the body. A dizzy spell hit without warning, and she closed her eyes for a second to clear the blurring. When she opened them again, the body had vanished.
“What’s the problem? You hurt?”
She looked up to find Carlos hurrying toward her, barefoot and pulling on a shirt over his half-zipped, baggy slacks. Apparently he’d been asleep in the villa when he’d heard her scream. Tamale jumped up and ran to meet him, while Jaci grabbed a steadying breath.
“I’m okay,” she said quickly, “but someone drowned in the pool.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“There’s a body of a young boy here. I don’t know when he drowned, but from the looks of it, the accident happened several days ago, maybe longer.”
Carlos threw his hands up in disgust. “You scared me half to death with that scream. I can’t believe you woke me up for this.”
He must not have heard her right. “A boy drowned in the pool. His body is still in there.”
“Sure it is. Probably a ghost or two wandering around the beach, as well.”
Frustrated and angered by his reaction, she bit back a sarcastic comment of her own. It was obvious from his changed attitude that Raoul had told him why she was on the island, but even that didn’t justify his reaction to this. She turned at the sound of new footsteps approaching.
This time it was Raoul, dashing through the arched opening from the beach. He looked from Jaci to Carlos, then back to her again. “What’s wrong? I heard a scream.”
“Jaci is seeing things,” Carlos answered for her.
“I saw the body of a young boy floating in the pool. It was as clear as…” She stopped, suddenly inundated by cold chills and doubts. The courtyard lighting was dim. The water was a soup of decomposing leaves and limbs. Under those circumstances, nothing should have been as clearly defined as the body had been.
Carlos walked to the edge and peered downward. “There’s nothing in there but trash.” He knelt, reached into the water and pulled a soggy rubber ball from the scum as if to prove his point. “Is this what you saw?”
