Live To Tell

by Valerie Parv

  “Blake, if this is your idea of a joke…”

  “I’m not Blake.”

  She struggled in the strong, masculine grip, managing to turn sufficiently to recognize Eddy Gilgai. At his belt swung a formidable knife and a boomerang. She fought the fear threatening to swamp her. “You’re Eddy, aren’t you? My name’s Jo Francis. I’m not trespassing. I’m a guest of the Logan family, so you can let me go.”

  “I know who you are.”

  He started to pull her backward, toward the river flats. Oh, God, was he going to throw her to a crocodile? Terrified, she started to struggle and then stopped. This wasn’t going to help. She needed to keep her wits about her to get out of this in one piece.

  “This won’t do you any good. Blake is waiting for me.”

  “He don’t know you’re here.”

  “Yes he does. He left me a note.”

  Eddy laughed, a disturbingly unhinged sound that chilled her blood. “Blake didn’t leave no note. I did.”

  Suddenly, the messy handwriting made sense. She shuddered, imagining Eddy sneaking into the homestead and into her bedroom. He must have come in after Blake left, while she and the others were at breakfast. Blake would surely have stirred otherwise.

  “How did you get hold of the photo?” she demanded. And found she could answer that, too. “It wasn’t Blake’s copy. It was a similar one from the file you stole from the office after you attacked Cade.”

  “Didn’t think you’d spot the switch. Pretty smart, huh?”

  “Smart enough to get you killed when Blake catches up with you.”

  “He’s gonna have to wait his turn. A lot of people want to kill Eddy Gilgai, starting with Max if I don’t tell him what he wants to know.”

  “You work for Max. Why would he want to kill you?”

  “His patience is runnin’ out. If I don’t take him to old Jack’s diamond mine soon, I’ll be crocodile bait for sure.”

  He wasn’t making any sense. “Your people already know where the mine is. You’ve kept the secret for decades.”

  “My people, not me. They don’t trust me with secret business.”

  With good reason, she thought. “You’ve been stringing Max along all this time?”

  “I was following you people, hopin’ you’d show me where the mine is. Pretty neat trick to feed the big croc in Dingo Creek so you’d think that’s why I was hangin’ round your camp.”

  They’d fallen for it, too. Neither she nor Blake had realized Eddy’s activity was a cover for what he really wanted. “What have you done to Blake?” she demanded, striving to keep the fear out of her voice.

  “I took care of him. Wasn’t hard after I left some of your stuff in Cotton Tree Gorge to make him think you went in there.”

  “Blake wouldn’t be fooled by such an obvious trick,” she said, hoping it was true. “He’ll come looking for me here.”

  “Before then, you and me will have them diamonds.”

  “I don’t know where they are, any more than you do.”

  “You can show me the place where you disappeared.”

  “What are you talking about?” She knew he meant the place where she’d tumbled into the hidden valley. Blake must have recovered and come looking for her before Eddy could investigate the overhang. Why hadn’t he gone back there later, and found his own way into the valley?

  “Those rock paintings on the walls near where I disappeared are taboo to you, aren’t they?” she asked on a hunch.

  “None of your business,” he growled.

  “They are,” she persisted. “What happens to you if you see them?”

  “I get rich,” he swaggered.

  From Shara, she’d learned that there were serious penalties for people who viewed rock art against traditional law and custom. She decided to try bluffing her way through. “Even if I tell you where the diamonds are, they won’t do you any good. If you look at the rock art protecting it, your people will kill you.”

  “They say they gonna kill me anyway. If I get him the diamonds, Max’ll protect me.”

  She let herself slump in his hold. “How can I take you to the mine when I don’t know where it is?”

  He shook her viciously. “You better remember real quick if you want to see your fella again.”

  “He isn’t my fella. I was looking for him to tell him so.” Close enough to the truth, she thought. She had intended to give Blake a piece of her mind.

  “He’s your fella all right. You show me the mine or you and him be goin’ for a nice swim in the river down there.”

  He forced her around so she could glimpse a great horned head and yellow eyes showing above the caramel water. “After I show you, you’ll throw me to the crocodile anyway,” she said, proud that her voice shook only a little.

  “It be so quick, you never know about it.”

  She almost laughed. He sounded as if he was doing her a favor. Memories of an old lady promising to send her to the angels came crashing down on her. But she was no longer six years old. She had the power to act. With all her strength, she jabbed her elbow backward into her captor’s stomach.

  Braced to run the second his grip slackened, she took off, ignoring his curses and the light glinting off the blade in his hand. Something whistled past her head and a killer boomerang Blake had called a nulla nulla lodged in a tree trunk inches away.

  Sobs caught in her throat as she grabbed the boomerang. Frantically she wrestled the weapon out of the tree and spun around, holding it like the club Blake had told her it was.

  “Is this the weapon you used on Blake and Cade?” she demanded, keeping her eyes wide open although terror urged her to squeeze them shut.

  He danced the knife blade in the air close to her face. “You give me that.”

  “If you insist.” She ignored the mad pounding of her heart and the blood singing in her head, and swung the club in a savage arc. At the last minute, he ducked and the heavy weapon slammed into his shoulder, doing enough damage to make him swear volubly, but not disabling him as completely as she’d hoped.

  Sweat made the club spin out of her hand and go tumbling down the muddy bank, where she heard it hit the water with a splash.

  Recovering his balance, Eddy stalked her with the blade. “You better show me that mine now. Big croc’s gettin’ hungry.”

  She backed away. She didn’t dare look to see where she was putting her feet, trusting the squelching sensation underfoot to guide her, and praying she wouldn’t lose her footing. This close to the water, the crocodile could easily lunge for them. The mud was a dance floor to its broad, webbed claws. At any moment fate could decree either she or Eddy become the creature’s dance partner.

  It wouldn’t be her if she could prevent it, she resolved. Blake was still in the gorge somewhere, perhaps injured at Eddy’s hands. The thought gave her the strength to act. “Help me, I’m slipping,” she screamed, making a convincing show of sliding sideways in the mud. At least she hoped it was a show.

  Reflex—or the awareness that he could lose his meal ticket—made Eddy lunge for her. Using her joined hands as a club, she swung against his body with all her strength and sent him stumbling and slipping down the bank.

  Her momentum meant she had to throw herself backward into the mud to stop from following him. By the time she had righted herself, Eddie was standing waist deep in the river.

  No, not waist deep. Something had hold of him around the chest. His arms flailed in the air and his mouth gaped, but no sound came out.

  Rigid with horror, Jo was unable to move or scream. The threat seemed unreal in such a beautiful place but the humped, threatening shape of the crocodile’s body was unmistakable. Then the crocodile started to drag Eddy down into the murk.

  Oh, God, she hadn’t wanted this. Whatever he’d done, this was too appalling an end for anyone. She wrenched herself free of the clinging mud and grabbed the first thing at hand, a fallen tree branch longer than her body.

  It took almost more courage than
she possessed to approach the water and look death in the face. She hefted the sapling so it was half in and half out the water, the bushy branches within reach of Eddy’s flailing arms and hideous, soundless scream.

  “Grab the branch, grab hold,” she screamed. “Dear God, grab the branch.”

  But there was no one to hear her terrified plea or her sobs when she realized the water had closed over the crocodile and its burden. All she saw were bubbles rising to the surface. There was no trace of anything, not even blood. Around her, birds shrieked in alarm.

  Then she was slipping, too, faster and faster toward that terrible murky graveyard, her fingers clawing at the branch in the effort to save herself, but it was no good. She and the branch were carried into the water.

  Time froze, taking on the quality of a bad dream. As she struggled to the surface, spitting mud, she expected to see the crocodile’s blazing yellow eyes fix on her at any moment. Then the dragon body would come up like a submarine surfacing. With a powerful sweep of its tail, it would be on her.

  She saw nothing.

  A current had caught the branch and she was being swept along. She had no idea how she’d managed to retain her death grip on the sapling, but it was tangled around her like a barrier of safety. An illusion, she knew. The big crocodile was probably lord of this stretch of river, but there might be others.

  Blake had told her that after a kill, a crocodile stayed around, keeping watch over its prey. With a meal in its underwater larder, it might not be looking for another yet.

  An image of Eddy in the great beast’s jaws made the gorge rise in her throat until she forced it down. She was alive for now. Somehow she had to get out of this river. Eddy was beyond her help, she had no doubt, but Blake was out there somewhere, possibly injured. He needed her.

  And heaven knew, she needed him. Fighting for her precious independence seemed so pointless now. What good was freedom of choice, if the one choice that mattered was denied to her?

  Staying in the middle of the tangled branch, she kicked out with all her strength for the bank, struggling to get out of the current, and make it to shore. Weakened from the fight with Eddy, she had few resources left to fight the current but she drew on some unseen force deep inside her and knew that it came from Blake.

  He would never allow her to give up. How could she demand less from herself?

  “Hold on, I’m coming.”

  A sob burst from her throat. She must have conjured Blake’s voice out of her desperate longing. But the figure swimming strongly toward her was no fantasy. He was also fighting the swirling water, but his greater strength saw him make more headway.

  She dragged air into her aching lungs. “There’s a crocodile. Go back.” She was still sobbing, “Go back,” when he reached her.

  “Too late, I’m here,” he said grimly, then saved his strength to grab the branch and do what she’d been unable to do for herself, tow it out of the current by brute force. But to her confusion, he didn’t steer for the bank as she’d tried to do. Instead, he aimed for a floating island and beached them on a refuge of tropical greenery in the middle of the river.

  Feeling the current release her, she sagged, but immediately understood the need to get farther away from the water. Hauling herself to her feet she staggered another thirty feet before collapsing.

  Blake’s hands came under her arms. “Only a little farther, then you can rest.”

  “Sadist,” she grumbled but let him help her put a few more yards between them and the water.

  Nor did she object when he stripped off his shirt and wadded it to provide a cushion for her on the matted ground. Bare to the waist he had never looked more magnificent. “I thought I’d never see you again,” she said when she regained the energy to speak.

  His arm, already tight around her, became a steel band. “When I saw you in the water…” He coughed as if to clear his throat, but she’d heard the betraying emotion.

  “It’s okay. I’m okay,” she said, slightly astonished that it was true. “How did you know it was safe to dive in?”

  “I didn’t care. You were in the water.”

  Love for him welled through her, almost more than she could bear. “Thank you.”

  His lips grazed her forehead, her nose, her mouth. Light, possessive kisses she would have resisted only hours before. Now, she accepted them for the homage he intended. For the love.

  Sorely tempted to retreat into the sanctuary of his love and banish all memory of tragedy, she resisted, knowing it would not be banished for long.

  She squared her shoulders and moved a little away from him. “Did you see what happened? How the crocodile took Eddy.”

  Blake’s jaw firmed. “I saw. I was on the escarpment, following the wild goose chase he’d set out for me, when I heard you scream. I couldn’t get down to you any faster.”

  “There’s no chance he’s alive?”

  “None.”

  “He didn’t make a sound, just flailed his arms, and then the crocodile took him under.”

  Blake seemed to understand her need to go over the details. He didn’t try to hush her or comfort her until she’d haltingly recounted the event, but held her strongly, reassuringly.

  When her words faltered at last, he pulled her against him, stroking her back and hair. “Horvath will pay for luring you here and putting you through this.”

  She had explained about being drawn to the gorge under false pretenses. “Eddy said he wrote the message. There’s nothing to tie it to Max.”

  He hurled a lump of driftwood far out into the river. “That man has more lives than a cat. There must be some way to link him to these attacks.”

  “If there is you’ll find it. Once we get off this island.”

  He gave a wry smile. “I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up so soon.”

  A chill gusted through her. “There’s no way off except to swim, is there?”

  She saw him weigh up his answer and then lift his shoulders. “No.”

  A plunge into ice water couldn’t have shocked her more but she faced him unflinchingly. “Then we swim. We did it once, we can do it again.”

  He cupped her chin and pressed his mouth against hers. “You’re one hell of a woman, Joanne Francis.”

  As he’d no doubt intended, she pulled down the corners of her mouth. “I warned you about the consequences of using that name.”

  “Then try this one for size, Mrs. Stirton.”

  She played along. Anything to banish the fear lurking at the fringes of her mind. “What makes you think I intend to be Mrs. Anybody?”

  “It’s your call. After this morning, I won’t impose anything on you that you don’t want, not even my protection if it makes you feel smothered.”

  She nestled into his arm. “At this moment, I welcome all the smothering I can get.”

  “Only at this moment?”

  How well he knew her. “Okay, it probably won’t last. But I’ll try to keep my independent streak from getting us into any more trouble.”

  “Can’t ask for more than that.” He got up and started uphill.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Before we swim for it, I want to be sure it’s our only alternative.”

  Her relief was ill-disguised. “I’m with you there.”

  Scrambling through the tangled undergrowth and stumbling over the raft of river debris was no picnic, but she wasn’t anxious to brave the river again just yet.

  The island was obviously home to large numbers of birds. Remains of nests and broken eggs littered the high ground. “In spring, this place must be alive with chicks,” she observed.

  “It’s the reason no one ever comes here, to preserve the breeding ground as a sanctuary,” he explained.

  She almost fell over a massive mound. “Wow, I’d hate to see the bird that belongs to.”

  “Not a bird, a crocodile,” he said.

  Jo shivered and glanced around uneasily. “Now I see why you found my survival project so a
musing. This is the real thing, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t worry, you’re handling it like a veteran. No regrets?”

  “About staying in the Kimberley? Never.” How could she when everything necessary for her survival was right here in front of her?

  “I have to go to the ladies’ room,” she said with a glance at the crocodile mound. “Could you—um—stand guard?”

  “My pleasure.” Chivalrously, he turned his back while she found a relatively clear place among the screening bushes. Never had she dreamed of a crocodile nest for a bathroom, she thought.

  A few minutes later, she rejoined him to find his gaze fixed on a tangle of branches a few yards away. “It’s okay, you can look now,” she teased.

  He pressed his hands to her shoulders and turned her so she faced the direction of his gaze. “I am looking. Tell me what you see there.”

  Something familiar about the scene nagged at her. “Twigs, branches—oh, my heavens! It’s the place in Bob’s photo.”

  “If the canoe washed up here, no wonder it wasn’t found.”

  Almost reverently he knelt at the cluster, parting the twigs carefully, although he knew as well as she did that little would remain of a dugout canoe after twenty-five years.

  There was always hope. “Anything?”

  He let the branches fall back and stood up. In his hand was a curving piece of wood the size of a saucer. If they hadn’t been looking for fragments of a canoe, she might never have recognized it. He turned it over. Long ago something had been burned into the wood, the actual letters lost to time.

  Blake held the remnant almost reverently. “This confirms our guess that the underground creek in Francis Valley is part of the Bowen system.”

  “The Bowen goes all the way to the Uru cave, where Max Horvath found traces of diamonds. We must be getting close to the mine.”

  “Not close enough. With The Wet coming, we’re running out of time.”

  “One hurdle at a time,” she said firmly. “Feel like a swim?”

  Her light tone didn’t fool Blake. He knew she was scared to death and after what she’d witnessed today, she was entitled. He wished he could spare her the ordeal ahead.