Carla Neggers - Betrayals

Tears streamed down her face, but she managed to shake her head.

“They do,” Thomas said. “They bind their hands and feet and toss the young men into the water and make them swim.”

“And they survive?”

“Yes, they survive. Now, do you think you can roll over me and get to my other side? You’ll be farther from the water.”

“You’ve been out here longer…”

“Please, don’t worry about me. You’re smaller and younger-Mai, can you do it? It’ll hurt. Barnacles are nasty beasts, but if you can stand it, perhaps you can shelter yourself from the tide and hang on until help gets here.”

“My dad-”

“He’ll come, Mai. I’m sure of it.”

Another wave surged over the rocks and almost covered them this time, but Thomas was numb to the cold. He could see Mai’s small body lift in the water, then smash down onto the barnacles. At this rate, she wouldn’t even make it to high tide before being swept onto a wave and battered against the rocks, or even sucked out into the ocean.

“Mai…”

The pain had revived her. Biting down hard, she rolled onto her side, her back up against his side and groaned as the barnacles cut into her bound hands and wrists. The rain pelted onto her face as she used her momentum to carry her up onto Thomas’s back.

He welcomed the warmth of her body on his.

“Hold on through the next wave,” he told her, his voice hoarse.

The wave came, a huge swell that inundated him, but mercifully, only caught Mai underneath. Thomas could feel himself sinking into the barnacles. He couldn’t keep up the effort. His body would simply give out.

“I think,” Mai was saying, “if I get off you just right I can sit up and maybe kind of crawl backward up onto the rocks. Should I try?”

Oh, Thomas thought, to be fourteen again. Her energy helped energize him. “Of course you should try.”

“But if that woman-”

“We need to worry about the ocean right now.”

“Why is she doing this to us?”

“Because she made a mistake a long time ago and couldn’t face up to what she’d done. So she kept compounding that mistake until now, and she feels she has no other choice.”

“I hate her.”

“Yes, but she wasn’t always like this, Mai. She’s an insecure and frightened woman, and that makes her very selfish and mean. I’m not making excuses for her. Everyone’s afraid sometimes. It’s how we act when we’re afraid that shows us what we are. Do you understand that, Mai?”

“I’m going to roll off you now and try to sit up. Okay?”

He smiled even as he heard yet another wave coming at them. “Okay.”

“Your father and I were brothers.”

Either Jean-Paul Gerard had gone nuts, Rebecca thought, or there was another fly squirming in the ointment. Right now it didn’t matter which. Crouched down, she climbed back up onto the seat of her truck and peered over the dashboard.

Nothing but wind, rain, gray sky, gray ocean. Jean-Paul had already disappeared down onto the rocks.

Staying low, Rebecca cracked open the passenger door and slipped out, leaving the door slightly ajar, although with the crashing surf and howling wind, probably no one would have heard it even if she’d slammed it. And who’s around to hear it? The place looked dead. She shuddered at her terminology. Grandfather, Mai-they had to be around here somewhere. Given what Jean-Paul had told her, she was positive this was where her grandfather had come.

Annette was going to make him her scapegoat…again.

Hunched over, Rebecca used the Mercedes as cover and crept onto the walk, the flagstones slippery in the pounding rain. She moved quickly, but no one came out and shot her or grabbed her and took her away. Should I have trusted Jean-Paul? What if I’ve been gullible and he’s no good after all?

She shook off the doubt and kept moving. The walkway branched off, heading to the front of the house in one direction and around back in the other. She picked the one going around back and stood. If someone saw her, so be it. She tried to look innocently oblivious to what was going on and totally unafraid, but neither was easy.

She went all the way round to the side entrance, nearest the ocean. The door was unlocked. Inside the house was quiet and warm, as beautiful as Rebecca remembered from her few visits there as a child. As she recalled, she’d always gotten into trouble for one thing or another.

There were wet footprints in the kitchen. Fear rising in her throat, Rebecca followed them out into the hall and into the front entry.

Annette came down the stairs, buttoning the cuff of her shirt. “Why, Rebecca-hello.” She sounded cheerful, and even smiled. “What are you doing here?”

“Where’s Mai?”

“Out on the rocks with your grandfather. I was just looking outside. The weather’s turned rather nasty-it’s insane for Thomas to keep a child out there in these conditions. He wanted to show her the surf at high tide during a storm.” Annette came to the bottom of the stairs, her cuff buttoned. “I hope nothing’s happened to them.”

Rebecca stiffened, restraining herself, and headed back to the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Annette demanded, following.

“I’m calling the police.”

“Why-Rebecca, obviously you’re upset about something. What? What on earth’s going on?”

Rebecca resisted the temptation to turn around and scream for her to just stop, but this was no time to lose control. She hunted around for a telephone.

A loud crack sounded outside.

Gunfire.

Annette shuddered visibly, and the color drained from her face. “What…”

“Save it,” Rebecca said.

And she was out the door and running.

The first shot struck Jean-Paul in his bad leg. It had missed his upper body only because he had dived off a boulder at the last split second. His landing in the tide pool below probably did him worse damage than the bullet that had seared his thigh. It wasn’t that he felt any pain-that would come later-but that he couldn’t move. He lay prone in the icy water, the tide washing over him.

“In the end,” Nguyen Kim had said, “I win.”

Jean-Paul searched with one arm for something with which he could pull himself out above the water line, but he cut his hand on barnacles and came up only with useless periwinkles, snails, mussels and slimy seaweed.

A wave surged over him. Cold, salty water filled his mouth and nostrils as his body was picked up by the powerful tide and thrown down again, along with the sea life clinging to the rocks. He didn’t fight. The tide would ebb, leaving the tide pool quiet and still for a few hours, himself drowned…unless that wasn’t good enough for Nguyen Kim.

The swirling water flipped Jean-Paul onto his side, and as the wave pulled back, trying to take him with it, he could see Kim standing on the rock six feet above him.

Kim had been waiting for him. In the past, Jean-Paul might have taken him-in fact, had. But not today, with his body and spirit giving out. He had hoped, at least, his death would satisfy Annette and she would leave the others alone.

But of course, it was too late for that. Jean-Paul had seen the two figures huddled together against the battering tide… Thomas and Mai…no!

He had jumped from certain death, and Kim had fired.

Now the Vietnamese was preparing to fire again and finish him off. Jean-Paul felt his leg burning. The rest of him was numb.

Then-for no apparent reason-Kim was catapulted through the air, yelling, his legs kicking. His gun went flying. He more or less rolled, slid and plunged onto a steep, rocky embankment a few yards from Jean-Paul, and his momentum carried him down into the ocean, where the tide smashed him back against the rocks.