“We just leave it.”
Dominique could hear Pepe and Thomas climbed on board. When they entered the cabin, she could see that Thomas was bleeding profusely from his knee. He dragged his lower leg along with great difficulty.
“Take this guy outside!” Fernandes yelled, starting the yacht’s engine. “He’s going to bleed all over my boat!”
Pepe turned around and dragged the loudly protesting Thomas back onto the deck.
“You guys saved me,” Do said. Each word she spoke hurt her. “But how did you know …”
“Fernandes knows everything that happens on Aruba,” the fat man said without taking the cigar out of his mouth. “Let’s just say that nobody touches Fernandes’s friends.”
“Thank you, so does that mean we are …”
“On top of that,” he continued, “my people have been keeping a close eye on this Mr. Van Dorp from the moment he set foot on the island”
“Why?”
He turned around and looked at her for a moment while steering.
“Business, miss! Nobody makes drug deals with Americans and Venezuelans on my island without Fernandes. Shipping cocaine as pharmaceuticals. Who does that stupid Dutch man think he is?”
Dominique closed her eyes and smiled. She had a hard time imagining why Fernandes went so far out of his way just to save her. The fact that this was also about protecting his own interests eased her mind and reassured her for some reason.
She dozed off, but was awakened when she heard a piercing scream. Startled, she sat up straight.
Pepe came into the cabin and winked at Fernandes.
“What happened?” Dominique asked.
Fernandes gave the wheel to Pepe and walked over to her with a big smile.
“It looks like our good friend Van Dorp decided to swim to the island from here.”
“Did he go overboard?” She looked at him in shock. “But that’s murder!”
“Would that be considered murder?” Fernandes glanced at Pepe for a moment and shrugged his shoulders. “Then it’s probably a good thing that all we did was hang him by the life preserver on the outside of the ship. This nice gentleman can go and explain everything to the police himself in a little while.”
In silence, she sat back and closed her eyes again. She felt horrible. Her lungs hurt, and she was beyond exhausted. The wound on her head was bleeding.
Her eyes filled with tears. Lilian. She was dead. Thomas had murdered her. Her own Uncle Thomas. What a betrayal! Not only to Lil and her, but also to her father. She still couldn’t believe she had survived it herself.
After the yacht docked in the marina near the Oranjestad center and Pepe had lifted her from the couch, Fernandes stopped him. He looked at Dominique with a very serious face and said, “We will bring you to the hospital. We will also make sure that one of our people will deliver this man to the police. But I would really appreciate it if you …”
She nodded and put her hand on his arm. “I won’t say anything to the police about your involvement,” she promised. “It’s the least I can do.”
72
Dominique felt like she’d been asleep for days.
When she opened her eyes, she saw her father sitting beside her. She was in a hospital bed, an IV in her arm.
“Daddy!” she said happily.
He smiled and wiped the hair out of her face. “Don’t get up—get your rest.”
Slowly, everything that had happened began to come back to her. Uncle Thomas. The boat. The island. She had nearly drowned. And then Fernandes and Pepe. Oh God, and Lilian!
“Lilian!” she said hoarsely. “She’s dead!”
Her father nodded sadly. “Yes, and her parents are destroyed by the news. Horrible for them. They were just here, but now they are on their way back to Holland. I’m so happy you’re alive. If I ever get my hands on that bastard! How could I have been so wrong about someone?”
Dominique closed her eyes and felt the tears streaming down her cheeks.
She remembered that Pepe had brought her to the hospital and that he had left the moment the doctor and nurses had put her on the gurney. That she had an oxygen mask put on her. But that before she had gone to sleep, Sergeant Snellen had come by to write down exactly what had happened.
Of course she had told him everything. But she had kept her promise to Fernandes.
What was going to happen now? She wanted to go back to Holland as soon as she felt better. But first she wanted to see Dave again.
She let her thoughts wander for a while, and then opened her eyes again.
“Dad, can I borrow your phone for a moment?”
“Of course. Whom do you need to call?”
“Mom. She needs to hear all of this from me.”
He smiled and handed her his phone.
“Okay, Do. I’ll go and wait in the hallway.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “Don’t leave; I am way too happy that you are here.”
Epilogue
The months following Lilian’s funeral were the saddest months of Dominique’s life.
She was still in the hospital when the police’s forensic diving team pulled Lilian’s remains from the shallow water near the eight-shaped island. The international press had been all over this story, and it was front-page news everywhere. Together with Lilian’s parents, Dominique had given one press conference. It quickly proved to be too much; the barrage of questions had fired away at her.
Dominique and her father had taken the same flight back to Holland, the same one that transported Lilian’s coffin. They were picked up at the airport by her mother, while Theo kept himself in the background. The first few weeks she had stayed at her father’s house, where Helga took care of her all day.
Her father tried to be home as much as possible, although that was no easy task. After the liquidation of Thomas Van Dorp’s company, he had to work extra hard. In addition, he also had to have some difficult conversations with the DEA and Interpol, because there was a lot to explain about the partnership between WernComp and ThomDorp Unlimited.
But Dominique couldn’t be bothered with her father’s problems now. She kept in regular contact with Lilian’s parents. She helped clean out Lilian’s room and tried to be there for Betty, Lilian’s little sister.
At the request of Lilian’s parents, no press were allowed to be at Lilian’s funeral. All Dominique remembered was that she had cried the entire day. The only positive thing about it was that Dave had flown to Holland to be there in person with her to say farewell to Lilian. They had stared at the coffin together as it was lowered into the deep dark hole in the ground. In the middle of the sea of flowers surrounding her grave lay a wreath with the Aruban flag and a large F on it. Dominique fell into a dark hole at the start of the new school year. She couldn’t concentrate on anything, especially when the court case against Thomas Van Dorp began and the whole media circus surrounded it.
Each time she bumped into a friend somewhere, the conversation would eventually land on Lilian and Aruba. Everything reminded her of the fact that she would never talk to Lilian again. And that she had never had a chance to say good-bye to her.
After a meeting with the dean of her school, she decided to postpone her last year and take a break. Her father agreed and paid for her to work on her thesis at the University of Chicago in the United States.
That’s where she was now. In the campus pool. She would swim a few laps every morning before she got comfortable in her favorite spot at the university library. Before she got dressed, she always took a moment to sit underwater. Sometimes ten or twelve times.
The lifeguards hardly even noticed the blond Dutch girl anymore, as she regularly disappeared underwater and sat at the bottom of the pool with her back against the wall. The first few times one of them had gotten worried and decided to check things out, but after a while they all left her alone.
For Dominique it was a necessity. After a few weeks, she only cried underwater, and lately she had
not even been doing that as much anymore. She could put her thoughts in order, process her grief. Even the horrific experience in the water on the eight-shaped island seemed not as bad when she sat at the bottom of the pool.
While she sat there in a string of bubbles, there was a large splash and she noticed a tanned body swimming toward her. A grinning face with a long lock of blond hair stopped in front of her and pressed his lips against hers. She answered him automatically with a kiss in return.
That was the great thing about Chicago. Not only did the economics department have a renowned and worldwide reputation, but it was also close to Canada. Dominique waited for Dave to take a seat next to her. Then she grabbed his hand and smiled at him underwater.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Suzanne Vermeer
Originally published in Dutch as Bon Bini Beach
Translated by Jordan Sowle
Translation copyright © 2014 by A.W. Bruna Publishers, The Netherlands
978-1-4804-7119-1
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Bon Bini Beach: A Thriller Page 24
