Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 (21 page)

The rain fell. Not an especially strong rain, just steady and wet and dispiriting. This wasn’t the rain that would come with the hurricane but the product of the peripheral clouds associated with that storm. Even so, it was damp and unpleasant on the breakfast patio. But we all stood there, most in varying states of nighttime disarray, and watched our means of escape from the island disintegrate within the curling, quivering, devouring flames.

We waited in silence and grim foreboding as
Chase and Enrique came up the path, returning from their fruitless journey to the steps of the pier. That was as near as they could go to the blaze. In the glow from a garden light Chase’s face was rigid with anger. Enrique’s dark eyes flickered uneasily.

Miranda, childlike in a short pink and white cotton nightie, darted out in the rain and caught Chase’s arm. Her voice was thin and high. “Chase, Chase, I’m so frightened. What happened to our boat?”

Her husband put his arm around her, pulled her with him toward the porch. “Come out of the rain, my dear.” His tone was gentle. When they stepped beneath the roof, he looked at the rest of us, his face harsh.

Valerie’s exquisite silk negligee was in odd contrast to her haggard and witchlike face.

Roger’s blond hair stuck out in tufts on his head, and his face was swollen with sleep. He had the rumpled look of a teddy bear.

The thick mat of dark hair on Haskell’s chest glistened in the light. Wearing only red-plaid boxer shorts, he stood with his hands on his hips, staring out at the flames, his arrogant face somber.

Lyle’s hastily tied seersucker robe bunched unevenly around his waist. He, too, was barefoot and barelegged. His dark red hair lay sleekly on his skull. His mouth was closed in a tight line.

In wrinkled khaki slacks and a creased knit shirt, Trevor stood with his arms tightly folded across his chest, his mouth turned down in a heavy frown.

Burton clung to one of the porch pillars, his face ashen. He was the only man on the porch in a pair of pajamas, pale blue cotton shorts and top.

I was dressed. I can dress in seconds, and my walking shorts and a shirt were at hand. Tennis shoes took but a moment, and I smoothed my hair up in a bun and pinned it as I ran downstairs.

Betty and Rosalia, both in long cotton gowns, waited just inside the French doors, not comfortable with joining us, too frightened not to stay near.

“I can’t believe …” Chase began violently. Then, as Miranda shivered in his embrace, he took a ragged breath. “There’s no point in standing out here getting wet. Let’s go inside.”

He led the way to the living room.

We trooped silently after him.

Chase led Miranda to a couch, then turned to face us. “One of you is a goddamned fool.”

That loosened tongues.

“It’s your boat,” Valerie snapped. “Who else would know how to blow it up?”

Roger turned on her. “Don’t be an idiot. Why would Dad do that? It’s nuts!”

“Why did he invite us here to start with?” The actress’s voice rose, dangerously near hysteria. “Talk about nuts—”

“Shut up, both of you.” Lyle’s voice was ugly. “Something damn crazy’s going on, all right, and we’ve got to figure it out.”

“But nobody would destroy the boat deliberately. Would they? Would they?” Miranda’s frightened eyes sought Chase.

I decided to toss in an observation. “Dynamite.”

That was all I said, but the quiet it evoked was instantaneous.

Every eye turned toward me. Even Chase’s.

“Dynamite. Three sticks, I’d say. Those explosions ignited the fuel.”

“Christ, that
is
what it sounded like.” Lyle looked at me sharply. “Who the hell here would have dynamite?”

If there was an answer, none of us knew it.

“That’s not the point.” Haskell strode to the center of the room. “It doesn’t matter—not now—who blew it up or why. But we’ve got to get the hell off this place.”

Miranda smoothed her flimsy nightgown down closer to her knees. “We have plenty of food, and we thought everyone was staying until next Thursday anyway. So … I know it isn’t pleasant … the way things have turned out, but it will be all right….”

She and Haskell were so close in age, but his face was old when he looked down at her. There was pity and affection and a desperate sadness in his gaze. “Randy,” he said gently, “the storm. There’s a big storm coming. A hurricane. And it will wash right over this island.”

Her eyes widened. Huge and dark and terrified, they moved from Haskell’s face to her husband’s. What she saw there brought her hand to her throat. “Chase…”

Chase lifted his head, listened to the drum of rain against the windows. “Right now we’re all right. And the storm may veer inland into Florida. This may be all the storm we’ll have, but…”

The rest of us understood.

Hurricane Derek—the last we heard, the last we knew—was heading for a landfall between Miami
and Savannah. If it struck Savannah—a full-force hurricane—this island would be just like Dead Man’s Island so many years ago.

Except this time the lifeless bodies hanging in the trees would be ours.

C
hase worked like a man possessed. His intensity galvanized us. There was much to do. The upstairs central portion of the house was chosen as the likeliest to survive the battering waters—if they came. Of that area Chase chose the music salon, an interior room, as our headquarters.

We all helped, bringing food, water, bedding, an extra supply of life jackets Enrique found in the storage building, flashlights, some medical supplies—and anything we thought would float. I carried my mobile telephone with me, dialing and redialing, one time after another, alternating 911 with the number of the Savannah Coast Guard air and rescue station. I didn’t have much hope, but there was a chance, even though the line crackled with incessant static. The call might be received and enough of it understood even if I believed there was no response. And there
was the hope, certainly my strongest hope, that the message would be overheard by a ham-radio operator monitoring the air for Mayday calls from vessels in distress. I kept it up until I was hoarse, intoning over and over: “
Mayday. Mayday. 3250.5 north, 8055.1 west. Party of twelve marooned on sea island. Boat destroyed
.”

When my throat was dry and scratchy, I handed the phone to Valerie. I wrote out the numbers and the message, and she took over, sitting cross-legged on a rose velvet sofa in the corner of the room, her platinum hair spilling down around her pale face, her crimson-nailed fingers punching the buttons with savage determination.

At one point Chase looked around, his face haggard. “Where the hell’s Haskell? Why isn’t he helping?”

Rain slapped against the poncho. My tennis shoes squished through an inch or more of water on the path. The rain splashed down with no letup, saturating the ground. The runoff flooded the path. My feet were damn cold.

I heard the steady crack of the hammer as soon as I pushed open the main door to the storage building.

Haskell knelt beside a pile of two-by-fours. A life jacket lay on the floor next to a plastic thermos. He didn’t even notice the spray of rain as the door opened behind him. He worked at a furious pace, grabbing the boards, slamming them in place, pounding in the nails swiftly. Makeshift, yes, but already recognizable as a raft.

I hurried across the cement floor. “Haskell, no.”

He looked up—such a young face, so handsome and appealing. No trace lingered of the languid, sulky youth I’d met at tea that first afternoon. His eyes were scared, but he managed a grin. “Hell, I lost my surfboard. Gotta make a new one.”

I knelt beside him. “I’ve got a mobile phone. We’re sending out a call for help every few minutes. Someone will hear and alert the Coast Guard. This”—I pointed at the platform of shiny new wood gashed by hurried hammer strokes—“is foolish. You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

He reached for another board, maneuvered it into place, began to pound. As the steel head struck home, Haskell spoke jerkily. “Yeah. A chance. Maybe the only chance. I’ve got to try. That phone’s a joke in this kind of weather. And the connections never have been any good out here.”

I reached out, gripped that warm, muscular arm. “Haskell, dammit, you’ll
drown
.”

“Maybe. But nobody’s going to answer that phone, Henrie O. Not even E.T.” The weak grin touched his face, then was gone. “The deal is, I’ll damn sure drown if I stay here—and so will everyone else.” He used the back of his hand to wipe sweat from his glistening forehead. “Listen, you’d be surprised what people hang on to in a hurricane and live to tell about it. Mattresses. Parts of roofs. Tree limbs. Logs. My raft’ll be okay. And I’m going to use some rope, make some handholds. The only thing is”—he looked at me steadily, acknowledging the risk, knowing what he was about to do—“it depends upon the currents. If I get a current into shore, hey, then I’ve
got a chance. And if I can get to land, reach help…”

“Haskell, that storm may turn inland well south of here. Your chances of surviving are better if you stay here.” Dear God, I wanted him to stay.

“But if the storm comes here”—his voice was remarkably calm—“nobody will make it. Unless I get help before then.”

I looked into dark brown eyes filled with courage and fear. He knew and I knew what would happen if the hurricane struck here—horizontal winds with the force of freight trains, winds and rains no man could stand up against. Waves twenty stories high. A wall of lethal water sweeping the island. But the raft was a wild man’s gamble.

A brave man’s gamble.

He lifted the hammer, attacked another nail. “I can do it.” He struggled to his feet, favoring his right knee. “I’ve got to find rope.”

“No. I’m going back to the house to get Chase. You mustn’t do this, Haskell.”

He was pulling down a coil of rope from a hook, talking to himself. “Shears, where the hell did I see those shears?”

I ran all the way to the house and up the stairs and, breathless, called to Chase. It took a moment to make it clear, then he raced down the steps and out into the rain, thudding and splashing down the path to the storage building. I followed.

Chase stood in the open doorway. I came up beside him.

The hammer lay near the pile of unused boards. Pieces of rope were scattered around.

Toward dawn the rain slacked off. But purplish-black clouds bunched over the sky like mailed fists, somber auguries of what was to come.

When I saw that I could not be of much help—most of the provisions were now in place, the lower and upper walls in the central section braced with more hastily hammered two-by-fours, the windows covered with plywood sheets, the phone manned, this time by a hollow-eyed Trevor—I set out in search of Betty.

I found her in the kitchen, helping Rosalia fix breakfast.

Breakfast.

It seemed insanely normal after the night we’d spent.

“Rosalia, we need Betty upstairs for a few minutes. Can you spare her?” I helped myself to coffee, poured in milk, even added sugar.

Rosalia turned from the oven. “Certainly, Mrs. Collins. And please tell Mr. Prescott that breakfast will be ready at seven.”

I looked up at the kitchen clock. A few minutes before six.

Rosalia opened the oven door and the delicious scent of baking muffins—blueberry?—wafted toward me.

I gulped the wonderfully warming brew and realized I was ravenous. “Yes, of course. It will be good for all of us.” I tried not to think of Haskell plunging
up and down on that uncontrollable raft in churning, unforgiving water.

I finished the coffee and opened the kitchen door. I waited for Betty to precede me, but as soon as we were out in the hall, the door closed behind us, I pointed toward the dining room. “Let’s duck in there for a moment. No one will disturb us.”

Betty stopped dead. She would have darted right back into the kitchen, but I barred the way.

“It’s all right, Betty.” I flashed her an approving smile. “I know that you are very careful, very thorough with your duties. I want to ask for your help. Now you unpacked my clothes when I arrived Thursday.” I made it a nonthreatening statement.

Hesitantly, Betty nodded. I wondered if she realized how her hands were twisting as she watched me.

“Wonderful. Come, then, let’s go relax for a moment in the dining room.” We passed the huge ebony-framed hall mirror. Once again I saw our faces, mine intense and determined, hers mute with expectant misery.

She wanted desperately to escape from me. But she could see no way to do so. Her feet dragging, she walked with me into the dining room. I flicked on the lights.

I wondered absently how long we would have that luxury. The beautiful chandelier glittered. All the gold appointments—the gold-threaded drapes, the gilt-framed mirrors, a pier table with gold-plated caryatid legs and dolphin feet—glistened as brightly as the day they were created. They would be as anomalous awash in seawater as the luxurious cabins of the
Titanic
had been.

I gestured for her to sit on the white upholstered sofa. But she shook her head and stood nervously beside it. Her hands twisted and twisted.