A Coral Kiss Part 17

"Open it."

Slowly Amy lifted the metal lid. It creaked. Inside the box was almost completely dry; the seals had held for twenty-five years. There was a bulging waterproof bag inside the box. Surely six emeralds didn't take up that much s.p.a.ce.

"Come on, let me see what I've got. Open that sack very carefully," LePage ordered.

Obediently Amy undid the fastenings. What fell out into her hands first was a stack of letters. She recognized her mother's handwriting at once. Amy felt physically ill. She swallowed rapidly.

"Never mind the junk. Keep looking. I want those stones."

Without a word Amy put her hand into the plastic sack. Her groping fingers found another envelope, larger than the others, and then, at the bottom, a small packet. Her hand closed around it, knowing it was her death warrant. Once LePage had the emeralds, he would kill her.

"There's nothing else in here," she whispered.

"The h.e.l.l there isn't." LePage leaned forward, yanking the box around so he could investigate the contents for himself. "They've got to be here. I'll kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.d if they're not..."

"Kill who?" Amy kept the small packet clutched in her hand as the box was pulled from her grasp. In the darkness LePage didn't notice her closed fist as he reached into the bag.

"Forget it. Where are they? They've got to be here."

Amy was on her feet now, the packet still in her hand. She edged toward the rocky pool behind her. "Is this what you're looking for?"

LePage's head shot up, his eyes full of violent anger. "You little b.i.t.c.h. I'll teach you to play games with me. Give me those stones or I'll kill you."

"You're going to do that anyway. I don't have much to lose, do I?" Amy held the open packet out over the yawning mouth of the pool. She could feel the hard stones inside. "What are the odds you'll be able to find these if I let them drop into the water? The pool is deep and there are a lot of places where six small emeralds can get lost. It could take you hours just to turn up one of them."

"Put that packet down or I'll put a bullet through your gut. You got any idea how bad that hurts? You'll lie here dying until morning. You won't even be able to crawl to the house for help."

"And you'll be on your way off the island without your payoff. A lot of wasted effort. I suggest we negotiate." Her arm was trembling as she held it stiffly out over the black water. She tried not to let her imagination run away with the picture he had painted of a slow and painful death. Already she could envision the blood pouring from her stomach. A creative imagination was a burden at times. Desperately she tried to shove the image aside.

"What do you have in mind?"

LePage was edging closer, the gun trained on her midsec-tion. He was simmering with a violent energy that Amy could feel. For a fleeting second she saw a monster with clawed hands reaching for her. She took another step backward and her foot struck against one of the jagged rocks that rimmed the pool.

"You can have the emeralds. All I want are those letters and whatever else is in the box. You let me live and I'll let you get off the island with the stones."

LePage's mouth twisted. "Sure, b.i.t.c.h, anything you want."

"You'll give me your word?"

"You got it." He took another step closer.

"How can I trust you?"

"Beats me."

He was going to lunge for her at any moment. Amy could see the predatory gleam in his eyes. The pool was relatively deep, but it was lined with treacherous outcroppings. Under ideal circ.u.mstances it should be entered with great caution; these were hardly ideal circ.u.mstances.

"Come on, b.i.t.c.h, you've stalled long enough. Give me that packet!"

Amy tightened her grasp on the packet of stones and threw herself into the dark water. As she went in she prayed she remembered the general contours of the pool well enough to miss the craggy pile of rocks on the bottom. Her goal was the cave itself. If she could reach its sheltering darkness she could survive a few more minutes. The first portion of the tunnel was only partially flooded; nearly a foot of s.p.a.ce above the water line could be seen during the day.

That breathing s.p.a.ce undoubtedly disappeared within a few feet as the cave angled downward.

Amy was distantly astounded that she didn't hurt herself on the rocks. The dark water closed over her and she stayed underwater, kicking wildly in the direction of the yawning, black cave entrance. A vibrating splash in the water told her that LePage had followed her into the water. She heard no sound of a gunshot and wondered if the water had m.u.f.fled it or if he hadn't fired.

It didn't matter. What mattered now was that he was in the water with her. She'd felt him enter the pool immediately after she had, so that meant he hadn't stopped to grab an underwater light. They were evenly matched in the darkness. At least they were until LePage finally realized he could hunt her down far more quickly with the light. Where was he? There was no sound from the other end of the rocky pool.

She was almost out of breath. In another few seconds she would have to surface. Amy's hand brushed against the wall of the cave and she knew she must be inside. It was time to find out just how much breathing s.p.a.ce there was. Lungs straining, she pushed her way upward, using the tunnel wall as a guide.

A few seconds later she surfaced, banging her head painfully against the roof of the tunnel.

There was less than a foot of heads.p.a.ce between the water and the roof of the cave in this first section of the pa.s.sage. Something that smelled green and mossy tickled Amy's nose as she struggled to steady herself in the water and keep her nose above the water level. She realized she was still clutching the packet of stones.

Silence filled the intense darkness. She was only a couple of feet from the entrance of the tunnel. Looking out Amy could see the pale wash of moonlight on the pool's surface. Clouds were moving in, breaking up the light pattern.

Where was LePage?

There was no sound, no sense of movement. Amy waited, wondering if LePage had already scrambled back out of the pool to get a light.

But there was only the fragmented moonlight, no harsh swath of a flashlight cutting the water's surface.

What was LePage doing?

He must have had to surface by now. He was somewhere in the shadows of the rocks, listening and watching for her to reappear from the cave.

The water was deep. She couldn't touch the floor of the tunnel with her sandaled feet. It was difficult trying to keep her head above water when the weight of her clothing kept pulling her down.

Amy couldn't stay there all night. Then again, maybe she could. It was better than facing LePage's gun.

But she sensed that LePage wouldn't have the patience for a long game of hide and seek. She'd seen the glitter in his eyes, felt the violence emanating from him.

Minutes pa.s.sed. When there was still no sound Amy decided to risk maneuvering closer toward the entrance of the cavern. She glanced once over her shoulder into the endless depths of the cave behind her and didn't make that mistake a second time. Once was enough to send new chills through every nerve in her body.

As silently as possible Amy started to swim forward. She hit her head once more on the low ceiling of rock and then she found herself at the mouth of the cavern. There was no sign of LePage or his flashlight.

Perhaps he was out there in the darkness waiting for her just as she had waited for him.

But she hadn't heard him clamber back out of the pool, Amy reminded herself. Still, she'd been underwater for a full minute or more. He might have surfaced and climbed out in that time.

She ducked down, deciding to swim underwater across the rocky pool and come up again on the far side where she could conceal herself in the shadows of the rocks.

Amy had almost reached the opposite side and had put out a hand to find the craggy wall when her toe caught on an underwater obstruction.

Automatically she tried to kick free. And then she realized what she had struck. It was a human leg.

LePage's leg.

It had to be.

Amy wanted to scream. Instead she fought her way up out of the pool, slipping and sliding on the wet rocks, clawing frantically for purchase.

She was gasping for breath as she hauled herself out of the water and knelt on the ground. There was no sound behind her.

LePage was still underwater.

She searched for the flashlight, found it, and finally got the light trained down into the pool.

"He was just lying there, staring up at me from beneath six feet of water. I could see his eyes, Jed. They were wide open. He was looking at me. He was dead by then, but he was still looking at me."

Jed rose from the lounger and went to sit beside her. He put an arm around her the way he had the night she'd awakened with the nightmare. "He was dead. There was nothing you could have done and you had nothing to do with the way he died. You were trying to save yourself. He must have gone into the water after you and struck his head on a rock. He deserved what he got, Amy. He would have killed you."

"I know. I've been telling myself that for eight long months. Maybe if it had ended there, I wouldn't be having the nightmares and anxiety attacks." Amy couldn't feel the comforting weight of Jed's arm. She was too drawn in on herself, too lost in the horror she had been living with for so long. "But it didn't end there, Jed."

He went still beside her, his hand no longer moving slowly on her arm. "You'd better tell me the rest, sweetheart."

There was no reason not to tell him, Amy decided bleakly. She'd already told him everything else. He might as well learn the full truth.

Chapter Ten.

"I still had the packet of emeralds," Amy explained slowly. "And there were all those letters."

"They were written by your mother?"

Amy nodded. "To Michael Wyman. They were love letters, Jed. I didn't read them all. I couldn't. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely handle them. But I read enough to find out that she was pa.s.sionately in love with him and intended to run off with him. There were pictures, too. In the big envelope. Black and white photos of my father talking to a man I didn't recognize. They were annotated on the back. Somebody, probably Wyman, had written dates and times and a Russian name."

"Sounds like Wyman had set up a blackmail scam. Or maybe he'd intended to sell the engineering designs to the Russians and make it look as if it was you father who'd sold out."

Amy twisted her hands together and nodded once more. "If LePage had been right, that the emeralds were a payoff, then I had to a.s.sume the photos were meant to make my father look guilty. I don't know why my mother's letters were there."

Jed took his arm from around Amy, got up and went to lean against the railing. "Maybe he intended to use them as blackmail material, too. You probably won't ever know for certain, but it's possible your mother had changed her mind about going with him and he was planning to use the letters to force her to do what he wanted or to ensure her silence. What do you think happened that night?"

"I think," Amy said carefully, putting into words a theory she'd been working on for eight grueling months, "that my mother might have killed him and hidden the body and box in the caverns. My father doesn't dive, Jed. Only a good diver could have risked going into those caves to hide a body. LePage seemed very certain Wyman hadn't gone down in his boat. He was sure he'd been killed and he said he'd seen those pieces of lead and the remains of some diving equipment."

"He had no way of knowing for certain they once belonged to Wyman."

"No, I suppose not." Amy paused, thinking of one of the scenes from her nightmares.

"So what do you figure as your mother's motive?" Jed asked laconically.

"I don't know." Amy looked down at her folded hands. "Jealousy, perhaps. Wyman apparently had another love, according to Rosie. Or perhaps my mother did try to break things off and Wyman threatened to blackmail her with the letters as you suggested. I don't know, Jed, but I have this terrible feeling that LePage was right. Someone killed Wyman and the only one who could have done it and also hidden the body in those caves was my mother. Jed, no one knows about those caves except members of my family."

"Wyman knew."

"Well, yes. That's logical. At one time he owned the house and the land with my father." She was quiet for a moment, thinking. "What would be left of a body hidden down there all this time, Jed?"

"Amy, you're letting your imagination run away with you."

"But what would be left of a body if there had been one?" she insisted.

"The skeleton, I guess," Jed stated matter-of-factly.

Amy looked at him, wondering at the calm, pragmatic tone of voice. The skeleton; eye sockets that stared forever; bony hands that fluttered in the water. She swallowed. "LePage said he was fairly certain Wyman's body had been left down there."

Jed shrugged. "All right, Amy, it's possible Wyman's body is down there. Who knows? That doesn't tell us who killed him. With six good emeralds involved, I'd say the number of possible murderers is fairly open. h.e.l.l, the Russians themselves might have decided to take the designs and the emeralds after the deal was concluded."

"Except that the stones were still in the box," Amy said quietly.

"They were in that packet you took into the water with you? You checked?"

"Yes."

Jed gave her a considering look, folding his arms thoughtfully across his chest. "And you just left them down there? Six emeralds?"

Amy stared down at her tightly clasped hands. "I didn't want to see them again. I wanted them to disappear. They represented so many horrible things."

"Mmm." His low murmur was distinctly noncommittal. "So what is the rest of the story?"

Amy took a breath. "I was in a panic. I couldn't wake my parents and tell them LePage had just gotten killed diving for a box that contained emeralds, incriminating photos and old love letters. And that he'd been willing to kill to get that box. All I could think of was that I had to hide the box and everything that was in it. I told myself that the caves were the best place. The box had been safe down there for all those years. It should be safe for another few decades."

Jed closed his eyes. "Don't tell me, let me guess. You took the box back into the caves?"

She clenched and unclenched her fingers. "I couldn't think of anything else to do. I just wanted to get rid of every d.a.m.n thing in that box!"

"Even if it meant risking your neck in those caves?"

Amy looked up at him and felt a queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach. "I didn't see that I had any choice."

"Tell me exactly what you did that night."

Amy couldn't tear her eyes away from his now. "I put on LePage's tank and equipment and went into the cave. I wasn't sure what I was doing. I've never done any cave diving. But I'd read a few books on the subject. I... I used the reel he'd been using. I tied the line to a rock outside the cave entrance and swam as far as I dared before I found a place to stash the box. Then I turned around and followed the line back out. I had the diving light with me, and as I swam out of the tunnel back into the pool I could see him lying there in the water. He was still staring at me. Then when I tried to climb out I stumbled on the rocks and... and fell back into the water. I felt his leg again and I... Oh, G.o.d. Jed." She couldn't say anything else. Her hand moved in a vague, helpless gesture and then settled back onto her lap.