Baited (11 page)

When a frenzied grunt from the boar invaded the tunnel, everyone separated, leaving Kat in darkness, like that of the deepest water. A black place of terrifying isolation.

Where was it? Had it gotten anyone?

Kat unsheathed her knife, sweat making her palms slippery. The heartbeats of a million fears flooded her temples. Dark, so dark.

Someone was crying for help. God, someone…in trouble.

And Kat had a weapon.

Self-preservation sounded so right. It was only reasonable to stay out of the way.

But something her dad the soldier had told her time and again came back to Kat.

Inside every person is a coward
, he’d said, smiling at her because he knew that wasn’t the kind of girl he wanted to raise.
And it’s up to that individual to do what they can with it. Because, in the end, that coward could haunt you…if you don’t kill it first
.

A woman screamed, shaking Kat back into the horror of cold tunnel walls, reverberating pleas and utter blindness.

Sucking in a breath to sustain her, Kat flattened one hand on the rock. Then, she took her first step toward the screaming.

Ba-bump, ba-bump
. Her pulse flashed through her head.

Another scream. Which way was it coming from? Near the shelter? Or from the depths of the tunnels?

She wanted to yell, just to let the other person know she was coming. But what if she attracted the boar?

Trailing her hand along the wall, Kat continued, her breathing keeping time with a drip, drip from somewhere above.

“Help!”

Closer.

I’m coming, she thought. I’ll be there soon.

Ba-bump…

Then, another frantic shout.

From another direction.

“No, no, nooooooo!”

The acoustics were playing mind games. Which way was the victim screaming from? Should Kat go right or left…?

A death keel from the right drew Kat into action. The sounds of snarling and grunting confirmed where she needed to go. Pumping up her pace, she held the knife ready in one hand and trailed the other along the wall for guidance.

Light ahead, around the corner. Or were her eyes playing tricks, too?

Dim, dim, light—

The screams abruptly stopped, but the grunting continued.

Kat turned the corner into a foreign cave, open to the rain.

And stopped when she saw what was in the faint light.

The boar was rooting at Tinkerbell’s neck. Kat could see her red head bobbing as she thrashed in a silent scream. The woman was beating its skull with a rock, trying to push the creature off of her. But all she was doing was pushing it toward the ground, the movement of its tusks tearing her into movement too.

Fear and strength crashed together in Kat, a wave flaring against the rocky shore and destroying everything in its path.

Including the everyday coward.

With a yell, Kat flew at the boar, knife poised. Its throat gleamed like a target and, with all the stamina she had—something almost superhuman in this
moment of terror—she drove the blade through the creature’s trachea.

It spazzed, its squeal hoarse as it bit at her. Kat jerked away from the bloody teeth and yanked the knife out from the tough hide. The blade sucked out of the wound. Spurts of blood hit her like bullets as the animal shook its head.

There was no sound from Tinkerbell now, but Kat barely registered that fact. Instead, she became aware of someone else screaming behind her, running forward and jumping onto the boar’s neck.

Louis?

He seemed possessed, using his designer shoe heels to stamp on the animal’s face, keeping it from biting Kat.

Instead, it was biting
him
. But Louis kept kicking, his expensive slacks tearing, his cries of pain splitting the air.

Knowing this was her only chance, Kat went at the boar again, mindless with the rabid instinct to survive. She stabbed and stabbed its throat, figuring that the first try had worked so she should go with a proven thing.

The knife sunk into flesh, bloodying her hands.

Leave…us…alone!

Every thrust was an attempt to save herself from what was happening on this island. She wasn’t just killing Tinkerbell’s predator; she was keeping everyone safe. Kick, stab, Kick…She was so afraid to stop because it might start up again.

Louis had fallen to his knees. He yelled like a warrior, forcing the screwdriver into the boar’s eyes.

But the animal wasn’t attacking anymore. It wasn’t…

Kat stopped, stunned at having so lost control.

Her lungs heaved. She scrambled away from the creature, knife in the air for another strike.

But it didn’t move. Tink didn’t move.

Kat stopped Louis. “I think it’s dead.”

She didn’t know how long she hesitated, holding his wrist and listening for the boar’s breath. It never came. Blood covered her, hot and coppery.

Numb, she checked Tinkerbell’s silent pulse. When she yelled into the dark that they were safe, her voice sounded like another woman’s, one who lived on a different plane of existence.

It wasn’t Katsu Espinoza. She’d never gone this crazy with fear before.

As she and Louis scooped up Tink and carried her back to the shelter—
where should they bury her?
—she asked herself again and again: Who am I?

They blundered through the dark tunnels, Louis wincing with pain and stumbling with his injuries. But somehow they found their way back, even if Louis had to crawl most of the way while Kat dragged Tink.

When she saw their own shelter’s natural light, Louis and Kat guided Tinkerbell gently to the ground at the lip of the tunnel’s opening. The bottom of Louis’s slacks were steeped with blood, maybe his own.

“This would be a good place for her to rest,” he said, voice anguished while pushing back Tink’s red hair from her forehead, just like a loving father putting a child to bed for the night.

Kat left them both there for now. Somewhere, in the
part of her mind that was still working, she knew it needed to be that way. That Louis was thinking of Duffy and wondering if Nestor was in the same shape, without a family to lay him to sleep. She could deal with first aid for his legs soon enough.

At least, she thought, we got our attacker. At least that boar won’t be after us anymore.

But her words slapped against her conscience like a deadened sail.

Really, they
hadn’t
gotten their attacker. Not at all. They’d only tried to protect themselves from nature’s food chain. The real threat was still out there.

And that became more of a reality than ever when Kat stepped into the shelter.

Because that’s where she found the second body.

A
ll alone except for the body of Alexandra Delacroix, Kat could only stare.

She couldn’t even feel the new bruises piling up on the old ones. Blood from the boar was like a heavy anesthetic on her skin, seeping into her.

How could someone do this?

It was like the murderer had been making some kind of statement, a sharp blade robbing Alexandra in death of the beauty she’d owned in life. Her lovely nose had been slit deeply on both sides and pushed up in a mockery of humanity. Her cheeks had been scraped, giving her a pink flush. Her ears had been sharpened to points.

Bile rose in Kat’s throat. This wasn’t real.

She heard a dragging sound behind her. Louis.

“Stay back!” she said, her voice garbled with protective panic. “Don’t come in here.”

Driven to action—she couldn’t let Alexandra’s father see his daughter like this—Kat searched for something,
anything
to cover the dead woman.

A drying suede jacket that had fallen to the ground would work. Kat grabbed it, eased it over Alexandra’s face. It covered the blood on her chest, too, but not the stab wounds in her stomach.

When Kat turned around, Louis was kneeling where the cave opening met the shelter. He’d obviously crawled away from Tink. Kat pictured the boar bites on his legs, the shredded muscle and deep punctures.

“Go back in there,” Kat said, angry because he’d disobeyed. Angry because she wouldn’t be able to stop him from finding out that his daughter was desecrated.

He glanced at the body’s legs: the threadbare high-fashion pants Alexandra had slipped over her bathing suit right before the big meeting with Duke. The elegant deck shoes that no doubt cost more than Kat made in a week.

As Louis’s mouth opened, a tiny breaking noise was all that came out. He collapsed to the ground, then yelled. The tenor of his pain shattered Kat.

Before she could go to him, she heard someone gasp from behind her.

Dr. Hopkins. The bandages had come off her muddied hands, and she was gripping a club in one of them. Kat focused on the weapon, but the doctor
dropped it to the ground and cradled her hands to her chest while pulling in a breath of agony.

Her hands…

The scientist took in Alexandra’s body. “Another?”

Kat nodded, too dredged in grief to ask questions about how the doctor had managed to hold a club.

Louis was moving on all fours to Alexandra, sobbing uncontrollably. He’d violently lost two, maybe three, children within days.

A nightmare, Kat thought, wishing she could just stop it. For all of them.

Janelle Hopkins limped over to Louis, kneeling beside him, offering words of comfort. Kat joined them, unsure of how he would react if she moved Alexandra’s body right now. But she didn’t want to shock Eloise with the sight of it when—or if—she came back.

But soon, the woman did return, tentatively entering the shelter with Larry, who held his knife out cautiously. When Eloise saw her husband mourning by the body, she wilted to the ground.

Maybe she’d already cried all her tears and there hadn’t been time for more to be made yet. Maybe she was just too shocked to feel anymore. But Eloise sat, thunderstruck, mouth slack, eyes empty.

Larry lowered his knife, his face cloudy.

Determined to make everything okay, Kat tore up a blouse and made bandages for Louis, who refused her help. She couldn’t argue with him, especially after he dragged himself over to his wife, where they huddled grieving together, her tears released by his presence.

Larry moved over to where Dr. Hopkins had joined Kat, who had torn up enough extra material to rebandage the doctor’s hands after washing them in the rain. As Kat worked, she inspected those hands. Dr. Hopkins pulled away, obviously sensing Kat’s suspicion.

Larry lowered his voice so as not to let the Delacroixs hear him. “Her face…?”

“You don’t want to see.”

Both Larry and Dr. Hopkins sucked in a sharp breath between their teeth.

“I don’t know what to do for them,” Kat said, motioning to the bereft parents across the shelter. “I can’t imagine what it must feel like.”

“You can
feel?
” Larry asked. “During all this?”

Yeah, Kat thought. Besides the obvious, she could also feel the boar’s blood thick on her skin. The minor injuries that were just now beginning to redden and swell.

Suddenly self-conscious about the blood, Kat looked down at herself. Red-tinted hands. Splattered clothing.

Both the doctor and Larry had followed Kat’s gaze. Now, they were getting a funny look in their eyes, like…

Like she’d done Alexandra in.

Kat rushed to explain about killing the boar. Janelle and Larry just watched her, a hint of…she couldn’t pin it down…suspicion? Cautious respect? Raw confusion? What was it?

“I was with Louis the whole time,” Kat emphasized, in case they missed it during the first telling.

Larry’s expression didn’t change. “And Tink? Is she okay after all that?”

Kat hesitated, but it was enough.

Once again, she saw that earth-crumbling hesitation in Will’s eyes during a moment that should’ve been so wonderful.

I think we’re having a baby, Will….

Hesitation was always enough.

Too overcome to speak, Kat pointed to the cave opening. Larry sprang to his feet in a panic and ran. His cry of rage and distress poured out of the cave.

In the midst of this, Chris and Duke finally returned.

And they’d brought someone with them.

As a rain-soaked Will entered, a thrill—sexually treacherous, wary—bored through Kat, scraping against all her suspicions about him, just like steel on flint.

Louis and Eloise stiffened, tracking their captain with swollen-eyed glares.

In addition to helping Duke walk—even through his own limp—Will was carrying a duffel bag with his possessions, his face pained because of his own bruises and cuts. On the other side of Duke, Chris toted a few oranges that spilled from his arms. While Kat’s ex shot her a measuring glance—he was checking out her blood-stained clothes—Chris and Duke distanced themselves from Will. Even before looking around the room, the teen began explaining why they were with the man who was suspected of attacking Duke.

“Will saw us hiding in the bushes out there,” he said as they guided Duke to his life jacket bed.

“I found Chris holding a big stick and ready to whomp anything that came near him and Grandpa,” Will added.

He trailed off when he noted their faces. The sound of Larry’s strangled, muffled cursing came from the cave.

The body.

“Lord,” Duke said, dissolving into tears and shaking his head. “Lord, Alexandra.”

As Chris lurched away and turned his back to the room, Louis struggled to his feet but fell to his knees, clearly lacking strength. Kat had forgotten about his leg wounds.

The ruined patriarch pointed a finger at Will. Louis looked like he’d been living on the island for years, gray hair bushed away from his skull, eyes reflecting pure hell.

“Where were you all this time?” he asked.

The question echoed the island paranoia in Kat. Where
had
Will been when Duke was stabbed? Where
had
he been during Duffy’s and Alexandra’s murders?

Her ex-boyfriend was still staring at the dead woman, face cryptic. Was he baffled? Struck down by tragedy? Wrung out with sadness at the loss of a lover?

“What happened?” Will asked, avoiding Louis’s question.

“Alexandra…” Speechless, Kat motioned to her face.

Comprehension dawned on Will.

Louis’s voice rose in volume. “Where the hell have you been, Captain Ashton?”

“I…” Will cleared his throat of its scratches. “This morning I was beachcombing, where I found some more stuff.” He dropped the duffel bag to the ground, his hand immediately going to his sore ribs with the movement. “I was just coming back here to tell you that there’s meat on the menu. I found a big female boar caught under a fallen tree nearby. Lightning. Nature did some hunting for us.”

Mama boar, Kat thought in a disconnected haze. Odd that it had maybe been her offspring they’d killed today.

Will straightened his shoulders and met every single penetrating stare, including Kat’s. Their eyes locked, questions, sadness, hope, all building toward a personal implosion. He was the first to tear away, his eyes haunted with something Kat would give her soul to identify.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Will said. “Can everyone else account for every minute of their day? Was someone always with every single one of
you
?”

From her corner, Eloise spoke, grief and spite hardening her tone. “Your knife was in Duke’s thigh, Captain Ashton, and not only that, you’re the only one of two unaccounted for when he was stabbed, and I know Larry was just with me during…” She quivered, obviously avoiding Alexandra’s body. “And where are the other knives you had?”

Will’s hand rested near his hip, on a makeshift canvas sheath he’d fashioned for his blade. “There’s one more in my bag, too. And…” He glanced at Duke’s thigh. “You got stabbed?”

When no one spoke, Dr. Hopkins took up the slack, levelheadedly catching Will up on the attack on Duke, the trouble with the boar, Tink’s and Alexandra’s deaths.

At the end of it, Will looked like he’d been jumped at midnight by a flock of street punks—beaten and robbed. And pissed as hell.

“What reason would I have?” he asked, turning to Kat for some support. “What motive?”

Five percent of a fortune, she thought automatically. The five percent he might’ve hinted at just before they’d made love. The millions of dollars he could grab after he charmed his way back into Kat’s life.

I don’t want to think it, Will
, said a soft spot in her soul.
Can’t you give us an alibi
…something…
that would get you off the hook
?

Resting his hands on his hips, Will shook his head. “I don’t believe this. I guess I’m the scapegoat, huh? Come late to the party and look what the hell happens.”

“It’s more than that.” Louis was on all fours, hunched over, breathing heavily. Rabidly.

“Goddammit,” Will said, “let’s start from the beginning. Why would I make an attempt on Chris’s life on the boat? And then, why would I kill Duffy?”

Against her will, Kat’s mind switched gears, her original Alexandra/Will conspiracies playing in her head.

According to that theory, almost every act of violence would’ve had its purpose for Will and Alexandra. He’d be getting rid of the obstacles for his could-be lover. But if Will and Alexandra had been in cahoots, getting rid of
her
wouldn’t have made sense.

Unless…God. Unless theory number two was the one. Could Will be killing off all the Delacroixs to keep them from laying claim to Kat’s possible five percent? From that point, Will could work his wiles on her, talk her into a relationship, then marriage, which would give him the fortune he so desperately needed for his family and his self-esteem.

But…jeez, that still didn’t make sense. Why would he have tried to get rid of Duke before he’d redone his will?

Damn, listen to her. Kat pinched herself, a small form of punishment and a wake-up call.

“Wait,” she said. “This is a bad time for accusations—”

Eloise interrupted. “Captain Ashton’s going to kill again if we don’t work this out now.”

Kat’s stomach clenched. “We need proof before we—”

Before she could finish, Louis darted a hand out to his side, grabbed a huge stick of wood and bounded forward with a banzai yell. With a decisive slam, he nailed Will in the back of the head, falling on top of him and bringing the captain to the ground.

Spurred by shock, Kat flew at them. “Will!”

His eyes had rolled back in his head.

She pushed Louis. “Stay back!”

From his pocket, Louis grabbed the screwdriver he’d extracted from the boar and waved it at Kat. “
I’m
keeping us safe this time.”

Psycho. That’s what he was. Out of his mind—loco with sorrow.

Before Louis could strike, Kat threw her body over Will’s. “No! We don’t know he’s guilty. You don’t want to murder an innocent man, Louis, you don’t want to be like the person who’s killing your children.”

She’d said it on purpose, knowing it would throw him off…or make him crazier. It was a gamble worth taking because she didn’t know what else to do.

As everyone else froze, the space hummed with tension while Louis poised the weapon, up…up…. He waited, hand shaking. Kat’s pulse beat into Will’s skin as she prepared to fight Louis off.

But just as she was about to spring at him, Louis crumbled. Eloise came to him, counselor and conspirator.

There was a vengeful streak running through the older woman, one that left the champagne-blond, happy lady from the boat among the sea’s wreckage. “I say we kill Captain Ashton to be sure. Keeping him alive is a risk.”

“Kill? We’re going to be rescued soon,” Kat said desperately. “The authorities can decide what needs to happen. And Will…” She swallowed. “Will couldn’t have done what you’re accusing him of. Please. Don’t do this.”

The other woman assessed Kat in a way Alexandra would’ve. Kat knew where the daughter had gotten that hardened air.

“You haven’t wondered about Will?” the older woman asked. “Not even with those rampant Captain Macintosh rumors?”

God forgive her…yes.

“We’re overreacting.” Kat was quaking in denial
now. “We’re letting the island, the craziness, get to us.”

A glint of conscience darkened Eloise’s eyes. Quieted, she pointed to Kat’s sheathed knife. “Would you be able to protect everyone from him if you’re wrong?”

Kat’s brain scrambled. Think, girl, think.

“For peace of mind, we can restrain him,” she said, grasping at straws—anything to keep him alive, so she could find out the truth and maybe even save him from this forming mob. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if Will wasn’t cleared. “Will has some rope.”

Dr. Hopkins spoke up from the other side of the shelter. “I know some good knots that I picked up during my time at sea.”