But you solved that problem for him, Sonya said.
Yes, I did, Jeremy said. I figured if I could make the family run to
Distingue, I
could kill the children here, just like I threatened, cut them all up. Then Joe Dougherty would fall all over himself to unload his share of the island. He'd never want to live here again.
To keep him off balance, Sonya said, I still don't see why you had to kill Hayes.
He wanted to go through with the kidnapping, what I told him we'd do in the beginning. A month ago, I told him it was off, that I'd decided we couldn't get away with it. But he wouldn't let up on me. Sunday, when he found out the Doughertys were gone, he rented a boat and came over here to
Distingue.
He was getting in my way. I had to kill him.
She thought she heard something in the corridor, outside, but she could not be sure if it was someone who had come up from the storm cellar, or whether it was only a noise that the storm had made.
Sadly as she could, as if she sympathized with him, she said, But Jeremy, you won't help Bill at all, if you kill Alex and Tina. The Blenwells never meant for you to go this far to get the Doughertys off
Distingue.
When they realize what you've done to help Bill get that job, they'll never hire him.
They don't have to know it was done for Bill, Jeremy said, smiling slyly. They never have to know.
She thought fast, still listening for a repeat of that noise from the corridor, and she said, If you do escape, do you realize who they're going to blame for Rudolph's death-for the children and for me?
He looked blank.
Bill, she said. Bill's the only man that's not in the cellar. Nobody on
Distingue
even knows about you. So Bill will become your fall guy. They'll send Bill to prison in your place.
He grinned.
He said, I thought of that.
A trace of fear lay beneath her calm again, but she tried to keep it small, to keep it from burgeoning and taking over. She was beginning to see that his madness was too entrenched, and that she could never really shake him up badly, crack him open.
He said, I'll cut Bill a few times, not seriously, but deep and with a good bit of blood running. Then I'll dispose of the knife. He can give them a description of me, tell them that I cut him and that he fell and passed out. He can convince them that I spared him because I probably saw him bleeding and thought he was dead. No one will suspect him for long, if at all. He's too nice a guy. Everyone knows that he is.
By now, she had realized that the noise in the hall must have been made by the storm, for she had heard nothing like it again, and no one had appeared to help her. She could think of nothing further to say to this madman, nothing to delay him any longer; and if she could not keep him engaged in conversation, he would step forward in a moment and put that knife under her chin, very deep under her chin. Her only hope now was to distract him, to turn and try for the door. If he gave chase, she ought to be able to lead him downstairs, where a cry for help would be heard.
She turned, without warning, struck the edge of the open door, and spun clumsily through into the hall.
He grabbed her almost at once.
The knife came up.
Remembering the fight in the bougainvillea arbor, she stamped down on the same foot she had injured then, harder than she had before, grinding hard to the right.
Though he had been able to conceal his injury to this point, had not needed to limp, that portion of his foot had been particularly tender, and now it erupted into white hot pain.
She jerked loose of him.
He swung the knife.
It sliced along the upper part of her left arm, drawing blood but not digging too deeply.
She stepped back into the kids' room and, in one fluid series of movements, slammed and bolted the door, making them temporarily safe from the man who was now calling himself Jeremy but had once been a new and special friend.
TWENTY-THREE
Sonya had not, for a moment, believed they would be indefinitely safe in that second floor bedroom, even though the door was bolted. Bill Peterson was a strong, vital, young man who would be able to kick in even one of these sturdy old doors if he were given a few minutes for the job. She did not think that they could afford to sit by and hope that, before he had smashed the latch, someone would have come up from the storm cellar to see what was delaying them. She was sure that, already, someone had most likely decided to come looking for them. But what chance did men like Henry Dalton and Leroy Mills have against a man like Peterson, when Peterson had so easily dispatched with someone like Rudolph Saine. A madman, with his system pumping extra adrenalin, could often have the strength of three or four men his size and weight; and even without this advantage, men like Mills and Dalton would have been no match for him. They might make it up the stairs, against his wishes, but they'd never get close to this room or to rescuing her and the children.
As soon as she'd locked the door, she ran to the bed and twisted the wire loose of Alex's wrists, told him to get the other length off his feet, then freed Tina.
What are we going to do? Alex asked.
Tina was still sniffling, but was getting over her fear with remarkable speed.
Sonya did not respond, but went to the window and opened the interior shutters just as Peterson delivered a first, solid kick to the far side of the door, just about where the latch was. She slid the window up, letting in the blunt fingers of the storm, letting in Greta's voice and thereby dulling the sound of his second kick which, nevertheless, she was sure was as effective as his first had been in loosening the latch screws and gaming him entry.
Look here, she told Alex.
He stood beside her, rain pelting his face through the open window, and looked out at the roof of the first floor porch. You want us to get down there?
You first, she said. It's a flat roof, and it shouldn't give you much trouble if you don't stand up on it. The wind will blow you off if you try to stand up straight, do you understand?
He nodded vigorously.
Peterson kicked the door.
A single screw pinged loose, and the latch rattled.
Stay on your hands and knees, she said.
He had crawled onto the windowsill, facing her. She took hold of his hands, helped him to squirm out, groaned as she took his weight on her arms. She leaned forward, trying to put him as far down as possible, dropped him when his feet were only eighteen inches from the porch roof. He fell, dropped to his knees at once, and crouched there in the high wind, as tenacious as a little animal.
Your turn, Sonya told the girl.
I'm scared, Tina said. She was pale and trembling, and she looked utterly unable to withstand even a few seconds in Greta's ferocity. But she was going to have to withstand it, and for longer than a few seconds.
Sonya kissed her, gave her a big hug. As kindly and firmly as she could, she said, You'll be okay, angel.
You coming, too?
Of course, angel.
Peterson was calling to her from the hall, but she did not listen. He had nothing to say that would change her plans; they had only one chance of escape, and they must take it quickly.
She repeated the routine she had used with Alex, letting Tina dangle from her hands, above the black porch roof. She was two and a half feet from safety, a more dangerous distance than Alex had been, but when she fell, her brother grabbed her and held her, making a more difficult weight for the wind to move around.
Peterson had stopped talking and was kicking the door again. Another screw pinged loose, and the whole latch slipped, close to being torn completely free.
Sonya sat on the window ledge, dangling her legs a moment, then pushed off and fell to the roof. She landed on her feet, which surprised her, felt the wind tug at her, crouched, scurried to the kids and directed them to the edge of the porch roof, helped them jump to the lawn eight or nine feet below, followed them.
Kneeling in the grass, she turned, squinting as stinging whips of rain lashed across her eyes, and she looked back at the bedroom window from which they had come.
Peterson was there, his face twisted in rage, his hands gripping the sill, as if he were about to follow them, a decision she fervently hoped he would make, for they would then have a chance to get inside and to the storm cellar, a small chance, but something, anyway. Instead, he turned abruptly away from the window, disappeared.
He would be on his way downstairs.
She had no door key with her, and they would never be able to break a window in the door and get inside to the storm cellar entrance before he met up with them.
She stood, bent over by the ungodly hammer of the wind, her hair skinned tightly back from her head, drenched despite the plastic windbreaker she wore, her whole body stung by pellets of hard rain, like thousands of determined gnats or mosquitoes. She had hold of the children's hands, and she drew them close to her, aware that they would be feeling the murderous anger of Greta more fully than she.
He's coming after us! Alex yelled.
I know, she said.
Tina had to hold her head down, to keep from suffocating in the dense sheets of rain that battered her small face.
What can we do? Alex asked. He was taking it all very well, she thought, and that gave her the nerve to say what she had to say, as ridiculous as it was going to sound.
Screaming to be heard above Greta's deep and unfeminine voice, Sonya said, We're going to go to Hawk House, to see the Blenwells.
Across the island?
Yes, she said.
She wasn't sure they'd heard.
She said, We can get help there! Now, hold tightly to my hands. Don't let go of my hands no matter what.
She felt their fingers tighten around her palm, and she tightened her grip as well.
Try to walk as fast as you can for as long as you can, she said. Don't ask for a rest unless you just can't go another step. She looked closely at each of them. They looked like two bedraggled puppies, and she couldn't see how they would ever make a mile and a half in the middle of the worst hurricane in almost thirty years. But they had to. They
would
make it simply because they had to; they had no other choice, other than to wait for Peterson and to die.
She kissed Alex, then Tina.
Come on, then, she said.
She started forward, her head bent so that the rain did not blind her, and she was happy to see that the children had either copied her posture or had come to it naturally. That was a good sign. Maybe not good enough, but something, anyway.
The first few steps were not so hard at all, even with the wind driving them a step sideways for every three steps forward, and she felt that, if she could reach the shelter of the palm forest, they might find the going just easy enough.
Every now and again, she raised her head to be sure they were still moving in the right direction and, as they neared the edge of the long lawn, she turned to see if Peterson was after them yet.
He was nowhere in sight.
Her heart leaped at that, and she got them started, even faster, for the shelter of the big trees.
BOOK FIVE
TWENTY-FOUR
Seawatch was at the point-end of the island's first hill, perched on the brow, with its lawn extending across the crest of the hill until the palms began on the far, downward slope and continued for the length of the island's spine, or at least until they were cut down to form the grounds around Hawk House more than a mile away. As Sonya led the children down that first small slope, slipping and sliding in the wet grass, moving toward the start of the palm thicket, she was surprised to see that the tiny glen at the hill's base was awash with brackish-looking water. The rain kept her from looking very far to either the left or the right, but so far as she
could
see, this slopping, choppy stream continued. She could not, or would not conceive that this might be part of the sea, that the storm had driven the waters this far in from shore, and so she assumed that what lay below was simply the rainwater which had run off from this hill and the next.
Though the stream appeared to be no more than a foot or two deep, its surface was deceiving, for it came nearly to her hips. If it had had any currents in it, she might have found it impossible to carry both children across, which she managed, now, in two trips.
Climbing even the gentle slope of the second hill proved a supreme challenge, for they all three slipped and fell repeatedly, as if they were on a greased ramp. At last, when they did reach the top, they were into the thickest growth of palms and cut off from at least a third of the wind's battering ram.
The going was still not easy, not by any stretch of the most vivid imagination, not anywhere so easy as Sonya had hoped that it would be when they got this far. Even at two-thirds its real volume, the wind was staggering and, when it gusted by an additional twenty and thirty miles-per-hour, it tore through the trees like fusillades of cannon fire, knocking them against the boles of the pine trees and, sometimes, driving them uncontrollably to their knees in the mucky earth.
And, if they gained an advantage from the windbreak effect of the trees, they had to suffer another torture they would not have been faced with in open land. The wind, already with a voice like a herd of mastodons, made the brittle palm branches rattle and scrape until the resultant din was almost more than human ears could take. She hoped that she would not have to tell Alex or Tina anything important, for even with her mouth to their ears, they would have trouble hearing her above the chorus of chattering fronds.