Perri O’Shaughnessy - Breach Of Promise

Completely drained of energy, panting, she examined the cove for Genevieve, spotting her instantly on the sand nearly hidden behind a bush. Genevieve had gone for the kayak. She would take the boat and get away. Nina watched, impotent, sucking in great gulps of the thin cold air, as Genevieve bent over to untie the yellow kayak, dragged it to the water, and jumped in, pushing off with a paddle. Galvanized, Nina went after her.

Swimming silently near the surface of the rough water, with one arm dragging at her side, trying to stay submerged, Nina came up along one side of the boat and heaved, using both arms, even the injured one, screaming to relieve the pain she felt. Genevieve went over. Without waiting for Genevieve’s next spontaneous act, Nina yanked her off the kayak. When they reached the surface simultaneously, she balled her fist up tightly, as Genevieve had, and walloped Genevieve on the chin as hard as she could.

Genevieve’s eyes shut. She sank, but Nina took hold of her hair and hauled her back up. Nina had done it. A knockout punch, one that would have done Mike Markov proud…

Nina tried to hold on to the kayak and use it as a float, but she couldn’t hold Genevieve and the kayak. For a long moment, she allowed herself to consider letting Genevieve go. She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t. With a groan of resignation, she let the boat float away.

Kicking them both back to the island without using her hurt arm proved difficult but not impossible. By the time she dragged Genevieve up onto the rocks by the cove, both Matt’s boat and the yellow kayak were bobbing merrily hundreds of yards away, completely out of reach. She fell beside Genevieve on the sand, half dead from the cold, stretched out, and lapsed into a stupor of exhaustion.

No more than a few moments passed before she forced herself to stir, telling herself to keep at least one eye open. But her caution came too late. A fine drizzle of rain falling from the sky was interrupted by the shadow standing over her wielding a long, sharp blade.

Genevieve had found her picnic basket.

As evening approached the lake turned to a velvety midnight-blue. The necklace of mountains surrounding the bay, shadowy outlines, piled upon each other in layers of paling grays. The wind that often came up at the end of the day kept the waves busy, lapping noisily against the shores. Swinging rapidly into the bay, moving as cautiously as he could in the deepening darkness, Paul felt they were edging toward the end of the world, and at any moment might fall off.

Winston’s moment of coherence had passed, and he had settled back down and begun to snore heavily, not a healthy kind of snoring, but Paul didn’t have time to worry about that.

He angled toward the empty, floating speedboat, reached over, and snagged the trailing line. With a little difficulty, he tied it to drag safely behind. The lighter kayak was floating much farther out, away from the island. But he had a more pressing question. Where were the women?

The question demanded an immediate answer. He headed for Fannette, figuring out that they must have gone back there for something Genevieve wanted. Maybe the boat had simply come loose. The kayak, too. Unwilling to imagine an alternate scenario, he let that straightforward explanation console him until he got to the cove.

No sign of anyone.

“The hell,” Winston said clearly. “What kind of champagne was that?” He tried to raise his tied hands to his head, and failed.

Paul pulled away, and began to circle the island, starting around the southwestern tip.

“Genny?” said Winston, head lolling, eyes nearly rolled back into his head. “I know you don’t really want to hurt me. Let’s talk, honey…”

“Winston!” Paul commanded. “What are you talking about?”

But the other man’s eyes closed, and his head lolled back.

Popping up sudden as toast, Nina swung with her right arm, connecting with Genevieve’s wrist, but she didn’t go far. Genevieve took her down and sat on her.

“Don’t do this!” Nina screamed. “I won’t press charges!”

The strangeness of this statement was not lost on Genevieve, who half-chuckled as she pressed down with her weight, trying to still a crazed, wiggling Nina. “Jesus, Nina, you’re gonna go to your grave jabbering like a lawyer.” She had Nina pinned. She raised the knife, trying to jab it into Nina’s throat, but Nina took hold of her wrist, and using the force of Genevieve’s thrust turned the hand so that the knife faced away, but the wrist came into close contact with Nina’s teeth.

“Ow!” Genevieve screeched, dropping the knife.

Rolling away from her, Nina jumped and took off.

“Now where are you gonna go?” she heard Genevieve saying behind her. “There’s nowhere to hide on this little bitty island.”

Nina found the rock stairs that led up to the teahouse hidden by the brush nearby. Scraped and gouged by the thorny bushes, she ignored the lacerating of her feet and the sharp twinge of her weak ankle and moved at top speed up, up, up, thinking, where could she turn off, where could she get away, buy herself some time…

“Nina?”

The voice behind her was too near. Her fear at that moment equaled the terror she had felt at the sight of the knife, an icy hollowness, like she’d been invaded by ghosts and would freeze up and die from the inside out.

“Let’s work this thing out, okay?” Genevieve panted. “You want your money, too, don’t you?”

Because there seemed nowhere else to go, Nina ran all the way up the hill toward the teahouse, too frightened to think or even to worry about breathing. Once inside, choking back all fear, she ran over the stone floor to the open window on the northeastern tip at the highest point on the island, leaned out, took a deep breath, and screamed the highest, most piercing, shrieking, fearsome scream she could muster. “Help! Help! Help!” Three cries, like the three trips to the surface a drowning person has before dying. She knew Genevieve could hear.

Down below, she spotted Matt’s boat. She jumped up and down, shouting and waving her arm.

Paul waved back.

“This hasn’t been easy for me, you know. I never knew things would get this bad,” Genevieve said, ducking through the low door and coming at her.

Paul whirled around the northeast tip of Fannette, going for the cove, all worries about the kayak gone, determined to get onto that island if he had to swim there.

Once nestled in, he looped extra rope to the boat, taking the end in his teeth, and dove into the black water; then he swam like hell. Almost immediately, he felt extremely winded. The altitude. He wasn’t used to the altitude. He treaded water, trying to catch his breath, then continued on, using a strong, easy stroke, counting to himself to keep the beat going, the image of Nina in that window indelibly printed on his imagination; the sight of her against that black sky, her clothing tattered and flying in the wind around her.

Nina jumped out the teahouse window, landing hard on the rock below, barely catching herself before falling headlong down a hill of solid rock that would surely, surely have ended her days as a jabbering lawyer.

She stumbled to her left, but realizing whatever way she went Genevieve waited, she climbed down the rocks for a ways, listening intently for the other woman but hearing nothing. When she fell again, straight into a prickle bush, she took it for a message from whatever spirit had kept her alive so far. Pulling her torn limbs away from the punishing thorns, she continued down a rocky slope made up of huge boulders, some cracked by weather, others huge slabs of roughness.

There must be somewhere to hide. There must be.

There was. Nina leaned her hand against a particularly sturdy-looking piece of brush and fell in.