“We need to go now,” Griff said as he opened his door and got out of the van.
He opened the side door, leaned inside, and gently lifted Barbara Jean up and into his arms. She draped her arm around his neck, offered Sanders a farewell smile, and closed her eyes.
Griff carried her onto the beach, his big feet burrowing into the loose sand. When he stepped onto the hard-packed sand nearer the ragged shore, walking became easier. The two boatmen had swum ashore and stood in front of Griff, their arms at their sides. Both were equipped with railguns and titanium scuba dive knives in lanyards strapped to their legs.
“Put her down,” one of the men told Griff.
“She can’t walk.”
“Sit her down on the beach,” the other man said. “Then return to your vehicle and wait.”
Griff hesitated.
“Do it,” Barbara Jean said.
He eased her carefully down and onto the beach. “I’m so very sorry.”
“It’s my choice.”
Griff glared at York’s flunkies. The evening sunlight bounced off their deadly, thick-barreled spearguns, manufactured for hunting deep-sea big game.
Anger and desperation coiled inside Griff like a cobra preparing to strike. After sixteen years of freedom and possessing great power and wealth, he had almost forgotten what it felt like to be forced into submission. At the moment, there was little he could do except follow York’s orders. But the day would come—and soon—when he would get his chance to strike back. He had killed Malcolm York once; he could do it again.
When he reached the van, Sanders was waiting outside behind the vehicle.
“You just left her with them?”
Griff nodded. “York will call again. Someone”—Griff scanned the cliffs above them—“is keeping an eye on us and reporting to York. He can see us, but we can’t see him.”
“So what now?”
“We wait.”
“Goddamn it, Griffin, look at her sitting out there on the beach!”
“She’s all right, at least for now.”
“Listen.” Sanders pointed out to sea. “It’s another boat.”
Griff followed Sanders around to the side of the van and they watched as this boat came as close to the rocky shoreline as possible. A man sat behind the wheel, and the two passengers, a man and a woman, sat in jump seats in the rear. With the boat idling, the male passenger helped the female to her feet, and then the two of them dove into the water and swam toward the beach. One of the two men on shore walked over and stood behind Barbara Jean while the other man met the newcomers. The man grasped the woman’s arm and dragged her out of the water and up on her feet. After he handed her over to the waiting guard, he returned to the ocean and swam back out to the boat. The guard marched the soaking wet woman across the beach toward Barbara Jean and forced her to sit down in the sand. The two women, now seated about fifteen feet apart, stared at each other.
One of York’s henchmen stood behind each woman.
“What the hell?” Griff grumbled.
“It’s her,” Sanders said, a barely discernible quiver in his normally steady voice. “It’s Elora.”
“Are you sure it’s the same woman you’ve been seeing around the island?”
“Yes, I’m sure. She’s the spitting image of Elora. Her face, her hair, even her body. It’s as if ... I know. I know. You don’t need to remind me that she isn’t Elora.”
A sickening feeling hit Griff in his gut as he realized that somehow York intended to pit Barbara Jean against the Elora look-alike. “Whatever happens, don’t forget that your wife is dead. Whoever that woman is, she is not your Elora.”
Griff’s phone rang.
“Yeah, York, what next?” he asked when he answered the call.
“Please place Sanders on the line,” York said. “My next instructions are for him.”
Griff eased the phone from his ear and held it out to Sanders. “He wants to talk to you.”
Sanders grabbed the phone. “Damar Sanders speaking.”
“Hello, Sanders. Don’t you want to thank me?”
“For what?”
“For bringing Elora back to you. You believed she was dead. You believed I was dead. And yet here we both are quite alive.”
“That woman out there on the beach, whoever she is, is not Elora. And you can call yourself Malcolm York, you may even believe you are York, but I know the real York is dead, just as my wife is dead.”
“Oh, ye of little faith. Wouldn’t you like to have Elora back again? Hold her, kiss her, make love to her?”
Sanders did not respond.
“You can have your wife back, your beloved Elora. Or you can choose Ms. Hughes. But you can’t have them both. You have to decide which one is going to live and which one is going to die.”
Chapter 33
“Don’t do this,” Sanders said.
Griff had never heard Damar Sanders beg, but he was begging now.
Without saying another word, Sanders handed Griff his phone.
Griff slipped his phone back into the belt holster. “Tell me.”
“He intends for one of them to die. I have to make the decision. I have to choose between saving Barbara Jean and saving Elora.” Sanders cleared his throat. “The woman who looks like Elora.”
“And that’s who she is,” Griff reminded him. “She is a woman who looks like Elora. My guess is that she had some cosmetic surgery done, just as York did. If she looks that much like Elora—”
“She does. She looks just like her.”
“She looks the way Elora looked twenty years ago,” Griff said.
Sanders heaved a heavy, resigned sigh. “Yes, the way she looked the first time I saw her.”
Griff curved his hand over Sanders’s shoulder. “What do you have to do to indicate which woman you’ve chosen?”
“I simply walk across the beach and get her.”
“You cannot save them both,” Griff told him. “York has deliberately placed you in an unthinkable position. As harsh as it may sound, you can’t let your concern about a woman you don’t even know affect your decision. That’s Barbara Jean out there, damn it. That’s the woman who loves you. The flesh-and-blood woman who has shared your bed for the past three and a half years.”
“Do you think I do not know that?”
“Then for the love of God, do what you have to do, what York is forcing you to do. We’ll deal with the consequences later.”
“There has to be a way to save both—”
Griff grabbed Sanders and turned him so that they faced each other. He looked down at the shorter man and gave him a hard shake. “If you don’t do what that fucking crazy York has told you to do, you won’t just be putting Barbara Jean’s life in danger, but Nic’s life, too. Damn it, man, are you willing to risk the lives of the women we love to save a woman who is nothing more than an illusion?”
Sanders pulled away from Griff, his black eyes blazing with fury.
And then Griff’s phone rang again.
Sanders stared at Griff as he answered, “Yeah, York, what is it?”
“I forgot to tell Sanders something rather important, something that might affect his decision.”
“There is no decision to make. He knows the woman isn’t Elora.”
“Perhaps she isn’t.” York sighed dramatically. “Let me speak to him.”
Griff held out the phone. “The son of a bitch is enjoying every minute of this. He’s prolonging the inevitable.”
Sanders took the phone. “Yes, I’m here. Yes, I’m listening.”
Griff watched the play of emotions crossing Sanders’s face and couldn’t imagine what York had just told him to make him go pale. Sanders dropped Griff’s phone on the ground and walked away toward the beach, but stopped abruptly long before he reached the two women.
Griff came up behind Sanders. “What the hell did York say to you?”
With his gaze glued to the Elora look-alike, he replied, “York asked me if I’d ever thought about the possibility that the dead baby buried with Elora was not our child, that our child lived, that the baby was a girl and—” Sanders’s voice cracked.
God in heaven!
York was as sadistically cruel as the real York had been, a man who derived immense pleasure from the physical and emotional agony of others.
“That woman out there is not Elora,” Griff said. “And she is not your daughter. This is one of York’s tricks. Do you hear me?”
“But what if ... I wasn’t with Elora when the baby was born. I saw the dead infant the day Elora was buried. Isn’t it possible that Elora could have had a daughter and she lived and York took her away exactly as he took Yvette’s child from her?”
Griff didn’t know what he could say or do to convince Sanders that York was lying to him. Under normal circumstances, Sanders was the voice of reason, the logical thinker who cautioned Griff about allowing his emotions to control his actions. But when a man was offered a miracle, even the hope of a miracle, he could be forgiven for thinking with his heart instead of his head.
“You know the right thing to do,” Griff told him. “You know York is lying to you. You have only one choice and that is to save Barbara Jean’s life.”
Sanders didn’t respond.
Griff watched as his dearest friend on Earth walked alone toward the two women, knowing that he could save only one of them. Never in the past had Griff ever questioned Sanders’s ability to make the right decision. Not the popular decision or the politically correct decision, and sometimes not even the strictly legal decision. But always the right decision.
Helpless to do anything except observe, Griff thought how at odds the beauty of nature surrounding him was with the events unfolding before his eyes.
Sunset colors in vivid hues of red, orange, lavender, and pink caressed the western horizon behind him, and the dying embers of light cast golden shadows across the beach. Amara possessed the same tropical splendor of other South Pacific islands, and to the visitors who vacationed here, it truly was paradise. But sixteen years ago, Amara had been hell on Earth where the condemned had overthrown Satan in a bloodbath. They had slaughtered York and his loyal servants.
Griff couldn’t help wondering if Yvette had been right when she’d said that Amara was cursed.
Sanders stopped ten feet away from where the two women waited, each knowing her fate lay in his hands. First one guard and then the other removed his scuba dive knife from the lanyard strapped to his leg. Barbara Jean’s clasped hands rested in her lap. With her head bowed and her eyes closed, she appeared to be praying. Griff felt certain, knowing her as he did, that she was praying for Sanders and not for herself. The other woman looked straight at Sanders, her arms lifted to him in a pleading gesture. Tears poured down her cheeks.
Griff knew what Sanders was thinking.
Is it possible this young woman is my daughter?
York had upped the ante. The woman Sanders loved versus his daughter. He had given Sanders a fictional scenario, a “what if” hope, placing him in an impossible situation, with an unimaginable choice to make.
She isn’t your daughter. She’s some poor girl that York transformed into the image of Elora. Use your brains, man, the way you always do.
With each passing moment, tension built, the conflict in Sanders’s soul playing out in front of Griff. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to change what was about to happen. He could do nothing that might risk Nic’s life. Despite how much he loved Sanders and Barbara Jean and Yvette, Nic came first. Always. If he interfered, York would kill her.
Sanders moved slowly toward Elora, his gaze soaking in every aspect of her face and body. No doubt memories of his long-lost love enveloped him. He paused in front of her. Elora’s guard placed his knife at her throat. Barbara Jean’s guard did the same.
Griff held his breath.
The ocean waves splashed onto the shore. Birds circled in the twilight sky. A cool breeze drifted in off the sea. Nightfall was fast approaching.
“I am so very sorry,” Sanders said, his gaze devouring Elora.
And then he turned and rushed toward Barbara Jean. He dropped to his knees in front of her and pulled her into his arms.
Thank you, God.
The man guarding Barbara Jean stepped back and slid his knife into the sheath strapped to his thigh. But Elora’s guard brought his knife down and across her throat, cutting a deep, bloody line from ear to ear. Then he leaned down and stuck his knife in the sand to clean it before returning it to the lanyard.
Sanders kissed Barbara Jean’s forehead and cheeks. She clung to him, crying.
York’s two hired assassins walked away, dove back into the ocean, and swam toward their anchored bowrider.
Griff ran to his friends, reaching them just as Sanders pulled away from Barbara Jean and rose to his feet.
He turned to Griff and said, “Take care of her for me.”
Griff nodded, then knelt down and lifted Barbara Jean up and into his arms while Sanders walked over to where the other woman lay dead, her blood soaking the sand around her. He dropped to his knees, reached out, and turned her over from where she had dropped sideways onto the beach. With trembling fingers, he reached out and lifted a strand of long, strawberry blond hair from her face. Tears pooled in his eyes.
He pulled her up and into his arms and held her, rocking her back and forth, as if she were a child in need of comfort.