Micah's Island (9 page)

Did anyone care enough about me to be
looking for me? I wasn’t sure. Why else would someone fly a helicopter over the
island though?

  Had anyone else survived the wreck of
the yacht? Surely not. 
I’d
barely survived it.

  Could it be the Coast Guard? Should I
run out onto the beach and wave my hands in the air?  What would become of
Micah if I did that?  I couldn’t take him back to Tiago. He certainly would
never survive the kind of
civilization
I’d come from.  I wasn’t sure I
could go back to that kind of life either.

 It didn’t take  me long to decide. We
both needed to stay put and stay here, where no one could ever hurt us again.

I prayed that the canopy of palms we
were under would be thick enough to hide us from view.  I lay still, my heart
pounding, until the sound of the helicopter faded into the distance.

~***~

The helicopter troubled my mind for a
few days, but I soon pushed it aside.  There was too much to do.

We gathered food, fished quite a bit,
and scavenged the beach for useful things that had washed ashore.  I found a
pair of boxers that would’ve fit him.  When I held them up to show him, Micah
ran away from me as fast as he could, making a really funny, high-pitched
screaming sound.  I nearly split a gut laughing!

Some of the debris we found was from the
yacht I’d been on.  There were quite a few seat cushions with that distinctive
purple and green flower pattern, bits and pieces of plastic, nothing terribly
large. The yacht must have busted up into thousands of pieces as it sank.  I
felt very lucky to be alive. 

We spent the afternoon at the pool.  I’d
intended to shave my legs, but I’d forgotten to grab one of the Bic disposables
to bring with me.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Micah, who
was floating on his back.  He gave me a smile and watched me wrap my sarong
around me.

I grabbed a razor and was making my way
on the smooth path from our house onto the beach when I saw it.

There was a dark brown and gold yacht
anchored about a half-mile away from the island.  I blinked a couple of times
and shook my head.  It shouldn’t have been there, but my eyes wouldn’t stop
seeing it.

It wasn’t as big as the one that carried
me away from Tiago.  It was one of the smaller luxury yachts, still sleek and
expensive, but much faster on the water.

My eyes dropped from the boat to the surf
in front of me.  There was a small inflatable skiff pulled up onto the beach. 

My brain had a little trouble processing
it.  I mentally stuttered, just like Porky Pig, before the words formed into a
sentence.

Holy fucking hell, someone else was on
the island!

I didn’t want anyone to see me on the
beach (my sarong was a rather bright blue), so I quietly turned around on the
path. My intention was to get back to the pool via the jungle, grab Micah, and
find someplace to hide until we could identify the intruder.

I nearly had a heart attack when I
turned around.  Standing in the middle of the path right in front of me was
Dolph Theobald!

I wanted to run...knew I
needed
to run...but my brain closed down all the programs I was running and refused to
reboot.   I just stood and stared at him, slack jawed, my eyes as big as
saucers. My eyeballs knew what I was seeing, yet my mind couldn’t comprehend
it. The few seconds I stood there trying to make sense of why this bastard
should be standing in front of me
at all
sealed my fate.

He rushed me hard and slammed me back
against the nearest palm. He nearly dislocated my jaw covering my mouth with
his hand.

He thoroughly knocked the wind out of me,
leaving me unable to scream or speak. It didn’t matter. In the few seconds I’d
stood staring at him, I knew screaming for Micah was not an option.

Dolph had a 9 mm pistol strapped into a
holster across his chest. It dug into my chest as he pressed me against the
palm.  Panic hit me in waves as I realized what that meant.

  Micah had no idea what a pistol was or
what it would do. Even if I would’ve known in advance that I was about to be
re-kidnapped by this jerk, I wouldn’t have been able to explain to Micah what
happened when you were on the wrong end of a gun.

 If I screamed, he’d come running, and
Dolph would gun him down right before my eyes.  And my eyes were not going to
be able to handle that. 

I was beyond scared, but I was also
really,
really
pissed. Either Dolph was a pilot, or he’d hired someone
to do reconnaissance for him. The helicopter I’d heard several mornings ago
had
been someone looking for me.   

This was just so patently fucking
unfair
. 
He and Calvin wanted me gone. I
was
gone. I would never have bothered
either of them again. Why in the hell had he come looking for me?

“Hello, Gianna. Fancy meeting you here,”
Dolph purred.  I just about puked.

I was shaking as violently as it’s
possible to shake. The fact that he had his body jammed against mine on the
palm was the only thing that kept me from sliding to my knees, boneless with
shit-your-pants terror.

I have to protect Micah. I can’t let him
know about Micah
. It
was a broken record that played over and over in my skull.

He took his hand away from my mouth. I
gulped air and stared into the hard, heartless black eyes of a snake. My eyes
played over the scar. I wondered what he’d do to my happy, funny Mr. Micah if
he found him. I’d do anything to keep this asshole from hurting him. Dolph didn’t
know how caught I really was. 

“How...in...the...
hell
...did you
find me?” was all I could manage. I sounded like I had a spiny sea urchin stuck
in my throat.

His eyes moved over my face, my lips, my
throat. There was lust in his eyes. I tried and failed to swallow the spiny
urchin.

“You were easy to find, lover. You
must’ve wanted ol’ Dolph to find you. You left me a trail a child could’ve
followed.”

“You lying bastard prick.”  I’d been in
the freaking water! I’d left
no trail at all.

He grabbed my throat. I squeaked. 

“That’s not nice, Gianna. It’s been an
interesting chase. Come with me, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Before I could say ‘
go fuck yourself’
he had me on my face in the path, with a knee in my back and a nylon rope tight
around my wrists.

Yeah, I knew what he was. Only snakes
move that fast.

~***~

I couldn’t possibly have been more
miserable. Dolph couldn’t possibly have been happier about it.

He found a nice thick palm and tied my
hands behind it. It felt like the tendons in my shoulders were going to pop and
allow my arms to drop off into the sand, like one of those poseable figures
held together inside by rubber bands.

  He enjoyed hurting me. I was trying to
do my level best not to let him hear me whimper.  Bravery in the face of the
enemy and all that.

How the hell did he find me?
  I couldn’t stand it any longer.  I had
to know.

“Why aren’t you dead?” I demanded.

“Same reason you aren’t.  But we need to
begin at the beginning.” He eyed me with his snake eyes, bright with amusement.
I was waiting to see a forked tongue come slithering out of his mouth.

“Go ahead.  I’m listening.”

“Do you remember the day that you stood
in front of Calvin and signed all those papers? You thought you were severing
his guardianship of you. You were actually signing the island and all of its
assets over to Calvin.”

 “I remember.”

“You signed and dated them exactly as
you were asked to do.  You dated them the day you signed them, four days before
your 21
^st
birthday.”

“So?”

He rolled his eyes at me. “Had I known
Calvin was such a fucking moron, I would’ve stopped him. I would’ve made him
wait. There was really no hurry to have you sign, but he wanted you gone.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You hadn’t turned 21 yet, and you dated
the papers as such.  Because you were still considered a minor under Calvin’s
guardianship, there was no legal way for you to pass title of the island to him. 
He might as well have wiped his ass with the papers you signed, because that’s
all they were at that point. Toilet paper.”

Ice froze my spine. I stared dumbly at him
as the information settled into my brain. I guess I should have said
settled
around my neck
.  Like a noose.

“I still own Tiago then.”

“Yes, you do.  Calvin went nuts, trying
to force the paperwork through in Florida.  His…
exuberance...
to claim
Tiago only made people wonder where you were. Some of the island employees
started asking questions. They noticed you were missing.”

Good for them
, I thought. I said nothing. 

“Pretty soon the Florida State Police
showed up on the island asking questions. When Calvin couldn’t produce you, he
fed them some cock and bull story about how you ran off all the time. Then he
wrote me a big check and sent me out to look for you.  Or your body, to be more
precise. If I could find your body—and I was sure I would—and it could be
established that you’d drowned, then all Calvin’s problems were over. I had an
idea where the ship went down.  I chartered a helicopter and started looking.”

“I still don’t understand…”

He cut me off.  “Did you know that this
island has a habit of disappearing?”

“What?”

“Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s
not.  I can’t explain it.  The first two or three times I took the helicopter
out looking for you, this island wasn’t visible.  The last time, it was.  I
knew you were on it somewhere.”

“How?” I was stupefied. When I heard the
helicopter that morning, I’d wondered if someone was looking for me. Even so, there
were no physical signs of my presence here.  Were there?

“I saw the orange lifeboat in the center
of the beach.  I knew it was from the yacht that sank.  I also knew that
someone would’ve had to pull it that far up into the center of the beach. You
thought you’d need it again, and you didn’t want the tide to wash it back out
to sea. Am I right?”

I could only nod my head. The giant lump
in my throat was back. I’d screwed both of us—Micah and me—by trying to be
practical.  Dolph never would’ve found me if not for the lifeboat, a bright
orange beacon screaming ‘
Gianna landed here’
in the middle of an expanse
of white sand.

“So how did you survive the wreck?” I
asked.

“Same way you did. Lifeboat. I floated
around for a day or two. Another yacht found me and took me back to Tiago. This
island isn’t that far away from Tiago, you know.”

No, I didn’t know. But I knew the rest
of the story. 

“Finding me alive is pretty convenient for
you and Calvin, isn’t it?” I said. “Now Calvin can prove he didn’t kill me,
and
he can force me to sign over the island. It’ll be legal this time. Then
you can take me to Saudi Arabia and sell me into slavery like you originally
planned. Bet that makes you proud.”

“Smart as well as sexy.  No Saudi Arabia
for you though. You belong to me now, lover. Calvin added you into the big
check he wrote me. We’ll be leaving for Tiago in the morning. As soon as Calvin
can prove you’re alive and have you sign new documents, you and I will be
leaving on a little honeymoon. Permanently.”

I slumped against the palm I was tied to
like a popped balloon.

I knew when I didn’t come back Micah
would look for me.  The thought filled me with terror.  I prayed we could be
off the island before Micah found us, but a part of me knew better. I was his
Gee. He would find me.

The sun started to set. Dolph had
brought some food from the yacht with him. He untied my hands and gave me
something to eat. I was so heartsick, I don’t even remember what it was. He re-tied
me to the tree as soon as I was done.

 I’d thought about running during the
brief time that I was free, but I knew I couldn’t outrun Dolph. He’d catch me
for sure, and I didn’t want that bastard to touch me.  He’d told me, in
explicit detail, what he was going to do to me once he had me on the yacht. I
would’ve gladly cut my own throat if I would’ve had a knife.

There was no silver lining in this
situation, but I tried to find one anyway.  It kept me from going insane. I was
grateful I’d found real love. It was something I could hold onto to forever. I
just didn’t understand why it had to be taken away from me like this.

I made up my mind right there that no
matter where he took me, I was never going to stop trying to find a way to get
back to Micah’s Island.

A spray of sand hit me in the side of
the head just as I heard Dolph yell “What the fuck!”  I looked up, and my heart
stopped.