Carla Neggers - Betrayals

Steeling herself against the pain in her ribs, Rebecca clambered down off the huge boulder, down to the tide pool where Jean-Paul was bracing himself for another round of pounding surf. He looked dead. Then he grinned weakly at her, and she cried out with relief, wading out to him. She grabbed him under the arms. Going with the oncoming wave, she used its momentum to drag him out of the tide pool. Then she scrambled, heaving and tugging, moving fast so they wouldn’t get caught in the outward pull of the tide. Jean-Paul was scrawny and she was fit, but she still had to get him onto a rounded rock, above the water line.

She saw his blood-soaked thigh and understood why he wasn’t doing more to help himself.

The rain beat down on her, and she half expected Annette to appear on the rocks above them with another gun, another attempt to kill them both.

With one last burst of energy, she hoisted Jean-Paul onto the flat boulder where Kim had first landed. The rain seemed to make getting a decent breath even more difficult than it already was with her bruised ribs and the exertion, but she stayed on her hands and knees, gasping for air, willing back the stabbing pain.

“Grandfather, Mai,” she said, “where are they?”

Jean-Paul’s eyes focused, and he tried to push up on his hands. “On the rocks.” He winced in pain, pointing. “They’re in the tide.”

Rebecca could feel near-hysteria rising up in her. “And Kim…”

“He’s a killer. Save him for last.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Go!”

Not needing to be told twice, Rebecca was off, clambering over the steep rocks. Jean-Paul hated himself for not being able to go with her. To lie here bloody and useless was unacceptable.

He swore viciously in French.

Slowly, the pain beginning to register now, he pushed himself onto his hands and one knee, and began to drag himself over the rock toward the girl and the old man…toward his father, damn both their souls.

The waves seemed to be coming in higher and faster and more often, and Mai was terrified one would finally take her and the old man. She still didn’t know who he was. Barely conscious, he was unable to speak. They had both managed to sit up and worm their way to a more sheltered spot up against a sleek, black boulder. There weren’t as many barnacles there, but they weren’t out of reach of the tide.

Mai was exhausted from fighting the waves. Even with the old man in front of her, trying to protect her, the force of the water was almost impossible to resist. She no longer even noticed the cold or the pain of her scrapes and cuts and bruises from being bashed round on the barnacles and rocks.

Dad…Dad, where are you?

Another wave was boiling in over her. She didn’t even prepare for it, but simply let it come.

White-faced and staring blankly out the passenger window, Quentin hadn’t spoken for the last five miles. Jared didn’t try to get him to talk. Preoccupied with his own fears, he hadn’t bothered to sugarcoat what he’d had to say: Annette-Quentin’s mother-had deliberately misled him about Tam and had ordered Tam’s killing and that of her own granddaughter.

“She’s lied to you and used you,” Jared had said brutally, “in the worst ways I can imagine.”

“But why?”

“To save herself.”

He’d explained what he could, not knowing if Quentin was able to digest anything beyond the fact that his mother had taken advantage of his guilt over his stupid involvement with the drug smugglers…that Tam hadn’t fallen into bed with his cousin…that Mai was their child.

Jared took the turn into the Winston driveway in Marblehead too fast and ran up into the pristine lawn, but quickly righted the car and sped up toward the house.

Annette’s Mercedes was coming at them.

It swerved onto the lawn to avoid a head-on collision. Jared screeched on the brakes and jumped out. He didn’t look back to see what Quentin was doing.

Annette had already rolled down her window. “Jared, I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t know what’s going on-there were shots fired and Thomas has Mai down on the rocks. Kim’s doing what he can to help. I’m heading for the police now. I’ve tried to call, but the line’s dead. Someone must have cut it-”

“Give it up,” Jared said stonily. “I know what you’ve done and there’s no escape. If anything happens to Mai, I don’t care where you go, there’s no place you can hide from me. Got that, Auntie? Nowhere.”

“You’re dead wrong.”

Behind him, Quentin said, “No, Mother, I don’t think he is.”

“Quentin…” Annette swallowed, no color at all in her face, and began to cry. “Quentin, don’t let him poison your mind. I’m your mother. How could you believe I’d hurt anyone?”

“I’m going after Mai,” Jared said, unmoved, and ran off into the rain.

Quentin fell in beside him. “You might need my help-I know every rock out there.”

Jared clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

They heard the Mercedes engine race, and Jared glanced back, seeing the big car bang into Rebecca’s car, right itself, and go on. He had no idea where his aunt was going, but it didn’t matter. He’d find her.

“Grandfather…Mai!”

Rebecca choked back her terror and slid down the black rock into the icy, thigh-deep water. The force of the swell pushed her up against the wall of the rock and she had to hang on to the edges of the rock to maintain her footing, hooking one arm around the slight figure of Mai Sloan. The girl was unconscious, and now, at high tide, every oncoming wave totally inundated her. Rebecca held on as the current tried to pull them back out with it.

Her grandfather’s thin body floated up in the foaming water and went with the receding wave, pounding over the rocks. Rebecca could see his pale, bloody face, and she screamed for him. He didn’t move.

Never loosening her hold on Mai, Rebecca shivered in the numbing surf and knew she didn’t have the strength to hoist Mai up over her head onto the black rock. She would have to edge to her right where, about twenty feet away, the steep embankment of rocks gave way to a small cove. The tide wasn’t as deep there. Rebecca would be able to leave Mai on the bank of sea-smoothed, softball-sized rocks and go back for her grandfather.

You can do this. Just stay steady and keep moving.

But as she peeled her fingers loose from their hold on the black rock, she could feel Mai being pulled from her. At first she thought it was the current, then she heard Jean-Paul’s French-accented voice. “I’ve got her.”

He was on his stomach on the rock above her, reaching one arm down and lifting Mai’s tiny body by her soaked shirt. Rebecca helped shove her up to him.

And then Jared was there behind him, taking Mai, and Quentin leaped into the water with Rebecca and thrashed out into a roaring wave where her grandfather bobbed helplessly. He got an arm around the old man, and they both disappeared in the gray swell. Rebecca dove in after them, losing her footing in the deepening water, the force of the tide trying to push her back. Barnacles cut at her hands and feet, and she banged against rocks as she fought to stay in control, not to let the tide seize her.

Leaving Mai with Jean-Paul, Jared came around to a rocky point off to Rebecca’s left, where the water was just waist-deep. He jumped in, and Rebecca made her way toward him, guessing he’d spotted Quentin and her grandfather.

Within seconds, Jared pulled Thomas up and deposited him on the rocks.

Together, he and Rebecca dragged Quentin to safety. He’d bashed his head on a rock but was conscious.

Thomas and Mai, however, were another matter.

“Jared…” Rebecca bit her lip, unable to bring herself to ask.