Riptide (28 page)

“Why?” Christina couldn’t help herself. This was the man she had imagined she would give herself to. “What were you doing here, Daniel?” She used the name she had called him at first, before all this started. Daniel Cunningham.

She was not rewarded with any sort of softening.

Instead, his face hardened and set. He shrugged. “There were people here. We were partying, that’s all.”

“Bullshit.” The word left Christina’s mouth before she could catch herself. It was a lie, and they both knew it.

Danny shrugged again. His lips curled into a sneer. “It don’t make a difference now.” He gave a chuckle that had no mirth. “And you know it.”

Horror took root deep in her solar plexus, sending icy tendrils shooting out at lightning speed through her body. “You were here,” she said, her voice rising in hysteria. “You were here the night Jason died. You came back, didn’t you? You were alone with him, weren’t you?”

Danny would no longer look her in the eyes. Staring down at the DVD in his hand, he tightened a grip and motioned with his chin toward the master bedroom. “You need to shut the fuck up. And get dressed. We got things to do.”

She was dimly aware that his speech had lost its careful cadence. He sounded, now, like pure Long Island, and blue collar at that. “Dan, what did you do?” Her voice rose higher.

He refused to look at her.

In the space of the seconds that passed, Christina suddenly understood why the paparazzi had been parked outside her drive. Why the tabloids had been running stories about her marriage gone sour, quoting unnamed sources that, she knew full well, were her in-laws. Why the plainclothes detectives had met her at the airport and accompanied her to the morgue to identify her husband’s body.

So they could watch her reaction.

Because they thought she had arranged this. “You—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. A strangling sound bubbled up from the back of her throat.

This got a reaction from Danny Cisco at last. “Don’t you fuckin’ tell me,” he burst, pointing a thick finger her way. “This was your deal, babe, and now it’s gonna play out.” He paused. “My way!” He jabbed his thumb at his chest, hard.

The movement made Christina jump.

He saw it and raised his eyes to her at last.

What she saw in them made her count the steps to the door. She blinked, hoping he couldn’t read her mind.

“We had a deal,” he said, his voice ragged.

“What?” Christina’s voice came out in a whisper, her eyes round with horror.

“We had a deal,” he repeated, his lips squaring off around the words. “I held up my end, and now you hold up yours.”

Christina stared. “What are you talking about?” She tried to force her mind to concentrate so she could understand, but she could not.

“Don’t give me that,” Danny snapped, waving the DVD in the air. “You know what you wanted, and I did it.”

Christina froze. A memory came back. Hazy and hot like a summer afternoon, or maybe a dozen summer afternoons. Lying in the chaise lounge with her legs spread, dipping her fingers in her margarita and leaving a trail for Danny to follow with his tongue…Protesting, telling Danny she was too weak to come again. Warning him Jason was due home soon.

“Fuck him,” Danny had growled. “Does he do this for you?”

“No.” Christina giggled and took another sip of her margarita while Danny worked on her. Everything in her world, at that moment, was right.

“Who needs him?”

“Who needs him?” Christina had echoed.

“He should get fuckin’ lost,” Danny had said into her clit.

“Get lost and stay lost.” Christina had giggled.

“There ya go,” had come the response.

Christina shook her head now. “That’s crazy. I never asked you…” Her voice trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

“Don’t gimme that,” Danny’s tone had dropped into the danger zone. “It’s too late now.”

Christina stared. She tried to force her brain to work, focus on what Danny was saying. But it had gone on strike, stuck on one basic fact.

Danny Cisco had killed her husband.

Because she, Christina, had asked him to.

“No.” Christina shook her head. She stared at the floor. It was the only part of the room that wasn’t spinning.

Danny was going on, about the deal they had made, but Christina couldn’t concentrate.

She was too busy trying to figure out if he was telling the truth. If Christina Cardiff was honest about her drinking, she couldn’t swear to what she might or might not have said. She’d drunk herself into blackouts for years, waking up the morning after a binge to lie there piecing together fragments of the night before. “I never wanted that,” she said, her mind numb.

“Bullshit,” Danny said.

He was right, of course. Many times, Christina had imagined a life without Jason, starting with that first Valentine’s night she’d spent alone and pregnant on the couch waiting for a husband who never came home.

But she would not, could not, have asked someone to kill him. “No,” she repeated, her conviction rising.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Danny warned, his voice low.

Menacing.

The room was silent. Even the rain had stopped.

But dark storm clouds still pressed low and menacing over Jonah’s Path.

What was happening? Confused, Christina looked at the lover she had once believed would open new doors for her.

There was nothing in his face that was reassuring.

Just two black holes watching her. Ready to pounce.

She thought again of the raccoon in the attic.

“Let’s go,” Danny said in a voice that was a perfect match for his eyes. “We’re getting married.”

If she married him, she would implicate herself in Jason’s death, which he almost certainly had caused.

She could spend the rest of her life in prison.

Worse, her in-laws would take Tyler away from her, forever.

She couldn’t allow any of those things to happen.

She knew this in her bones, with a certainty she had never felt about her marriage or even about her recent attempt to give up drinking.

Christina Banaczjek Cardiff had lived most of her life going where the current took her.

Not when it came to being Tyler’s mother. She couldn’t risk losing Tyler, no matter what.

“No,” she blurted now. “I mean, we can work things out.” Her eyes drifted, and she cleared her throat. Stalling while she tried to come up with the right thing to say.

“Work things out?” Danny echoed.

“Danny,” she began, twisting the ring on her finger. She backed up just a tiny bit, taking a small step toward the door.

Giving herself away.

“We had a deal,” Danny growled, as Christina froze, frightened now.

Their eyes met, and she knew he sensed her fear.

In that instant, Christina felt everything between them shift, like a tide that changed direction, forming a deadly new current.

He sensed it, too, his eyes flickering from Christina to the door and back.

Measuring the distance, the same as she was.

“You’ll never make it,” he said softly, already on the move.

But she was moving, too. Christina Cardiff saw her only chance and took it. She was five feet closer to the door than he was.

“Bitch!”

She heard the fury in his voice, felt his hand clamp down on her arm. “I held up my end,” he hissed.

“No!” Christina slid out of her robe and raced, naked, into the hallway.

“The cops are gonna find you, OD’d. And you know what, nobody will be surprised,” he growled, sprinting after her. “And nobody will give a shit.”

Fear lent wings to Christina’s feet, propelling her forward so she made it to the stairs in what felt like one giant leap.

Danny Cisco was right behind her.

Christina leapt down the staircase, her feet flying over several steps at a time.

He was muttering about her suicide, coming down practically on top of her, so close she could feel little rushes of air as his hands reached out to grab her.

She jumped down the last four stairs, landing on the bare floor with a crack.

Danny landed practically on top of her, so near Christina cried out in fear as she scrambled to gain traction on the boards of the great-room floor.

The main entrance with its wide door was the fastest way out, but it would be a long sprint to the front gate.

And no guarantee the paparazzi would be there.

The patio door was farther away across the kitchen. But if she reached that door, she’d have less distance to the back gate that opened high onto the dunes where, naked or not, Christina prayed there would be people walking the beach at dawn.

Someone to hear her screams and save her.

She took just a fraction of a second, no more, to opt for the back door.

Danny Cisco lunged for her.

She felt his hands on her.

It was all over. Christina screamed.

But it had been a long night, and Danny hadn’t slept. He was off his game.

Christina wriggled from his grasp as he made another grab, his fingers pinching at her bare skin.

Her life depended on this. Too frightened even to scream, she sucked in great, ragged breaths and scrambled for the back door, her bare feet making slapping noises on the floorboards.

“Bitch!” Danny hissed. He was close at her back, just centimeters away.

Luck was with her. She had neglected to lock up last night. She flew at the screen, pushing it open just wide enough to pass through.

Rain had blown inside during the night, forming a puddle on the floor.

Barefoot, Christina’s feet flew out behind her. But she made it through.

Danny couldn’t get traction with his loafers. He fell to his knees with a curse.

Christina gained a couple of feet and a second or two, no more.

“Get back here,” Danny yelled, scrambling to his feet again. He made it through the screen door even before it slammed.

His footsteps made a heavy thudding sound as he raced across the patio pavers.

Her life depended on reaching the back gate.

The grass was soaked, the air laden with moisture from the storm.

Rain clouds pressed right down on top of the dunes, making the gray dawn even grayer.

The sky pressed down on top of her like a lead weight.

The ground shook with waves pounding in to shore.

It was not a beach day.

Danny was off the patio and crossing the back lawn now.

Closing the gap between them.

“Don’t you,” he yelled, not bothering to finish the sentence.

He didn’t have to.

Christina knew what would happen if he caught her. She flung herself at the gate, her fingers scrabbling across the wood in search of the quick-release latch, praying she would get it right the first time…

And she did.

In the next instant, Christina was through, her bare feet sinking into the heavy, wet sand.

Danny Cisco was barely two seconds behind, his hands slapping heavily when they came in contact with the wet wood of the gate. He pushed it open again before it had a chance to click shut.

She heard heavy breathing and little grunts of frustration as he, too, landed in the heavy sand at the top of the dune. “Help,” she screamed, praying the sound would carry through the mist. “Help! Help! Police!” She kept moving. It was an effort. The sand clung to her like quicksand, dragging her down. She pushed until the fronts of her legs felt like they were on fire, slow as molasses like in a nightmare. Still, she pushed on, moving lower down on the dune.

Heading for the beach.

Christina had the advantage here, being barefoot.

Danny swore aloud, stopping to kick off his shoes.

Christina sprinted onward, her lungs pumping harder than they had ever pumped in her life, thumping so hard she thought they would bounce right out of her body. But it was her only chance. She feared that she would lose her small lead once he got traction with his bare feet in the sand.

And she was right.

In the next instant, he pounded up behind her, so close she could feel little clods of wet sand land on the backs of her legs.

Christina screamed in terror and forced herself on, emerging from the dune path onto the flat expanse of open beach. She risked a glance from side to side and saw no one.

The exclusive stretch of coast extending east from the village of East Hampton to Montauk on the south shore of Long Island, for which the Cardiffs had paid a sizeable fortune, had paid off.

The beach was deserted. The shoreline was chewed up, ravaged by the storm. Waves broke in choppy random sequence, laden with seaweed churned from
the bottom of the swollen, racing waters. Spray rose perhaps a dozen feet in the air over this roiling, boiling cauldron of brown water and green-tinged foam.

Christina Cardiff did the only thing she could do.

She raced straight for the pounding waves and dove in.

Danny Cisco followed.

The water was cold, brimming with bits of detritus the ocean swallows and spits back up after a storm. Long strands of seaweed and dark grass snaked through the foam. The tide raced in, carrying tree branches, some of them the size of Christina’s legs, tossing them around like matchsticks.

The tide pulled at her, knocking her feet out from under her.

The ocean came alive like an image from a nightmare, sucking Christina into an undertow with deadly force.

The current was stronger than anything she had ever experienced.

A thousand sharp stones pelted her feet, scraping her skin raw like knives.

A wave rose in front of her, sudsing toward her like an angry sea monster.

Every instinct Christina possessed told her to fight her way back, away from the oncoming surf and onto dry land.

But the terror of the ocean was nothing compared to the terror that was at her back.

Christina pushed off the rocky bottom and plunged in. She tried to swim forward and up, as she had countless times before. But it was no use. This sea was like nothing she’d ever experienced, pulsing and heaving with deadly force.

There was no way forward. There was no way
up.

There was only the ferocious force of the Atlantic, pushing her around like a rag doll, dragging her one way, then another, so Christina lost all sense of direction. She flailed desperately as her lungs grew short of breath and began to hurt. Her bare skin scraped heavy, cold sand, with stones tearing at her bare body like a million razor blades.