Part 27 (1/2)

Stuff swirled around her in the cold water, the seaweed and unidentifiable slimy bits clasping themselves horridly to her. Tendrils of vegetation poked at her eyelids and explored her lips as if seeking a way in.

A convulsive shudder went through her as something curled briefly around her wrist and then was gone. Gah, she thought, but it was too late for disgust.

Too late for anything. The utter foolishness of what she was doing struck her. But she couldn't just leave them, she just ...

The clasping thing grabbed her again, hung on tight. A hand, clinging ... at the same instant the plastic tube she'd given Bella to breathe through floated up, smacking her on the forehead.

Feeling around desperately, her hand found a ma.s.s of hair; she dug her fingers into it, trying to raise it. But it wouldn't come, and with her last sc.r.a.p of panicked energy, she let herself sink, bent her knees, touched the floor with her feet, and pushed.

Whatever she'd grabbed was stuck. Caught on something. Or it was dead weight ... But then as her lungs were about to explode she felt her body surging upward, still dragging a hank of hair ... .

Jake found the ladder by chance, grabbed onto it with one hand, and dragged the hair along with the other. At the top she couldn't climb anymore, with one hand still clutching Bella, but then Bella began moving.

One pale hand waved like a seaweed frond, then grasped the ladder rung in front of it purposefully. Jake hauled herself up out of the hole; right behind her, a wet ma.s.s of henna-red hair burst through the water's surface.

Bella's face followed. Jake seized Bella's shoulders, heaved her up and out of the hole the rest of the way, sucked a breath in, then plunged down through the hole and under again.

This time she opened her eyes, and the h.e.l.l with how it hurt them. Ellie sprawled bonelessly, clothes billowing out around her like laundry in a tub.

Jake wrapped her arms around the cloud of fabric and pushed off again, dragging dead weight. Weeping, sure she had been too late. She reached the ladder, but as she tried to shove Ellie up ahead of her she felt her lungs rebel, sucked in a big breath of seawater, and panicked.

But from above came Bella's hand, searching and finding. She pulled Ellie from the hole, then reached down again and grabbed Jake, who let herself be pulled until her face felt breathable air, then battled the rest of the way herself.

Ellie lay by the trapdoor. Coughing and choking she gagged up an enormous gush of ugly water, rolled over onto her stomach with a groan, and finally spoke.

”You cut it a little close,” she said, gasping through the sick, wet-sponge sound of her lungs reinflating.

But she actually smiled when she said it, or at any rate it was as close to a smile as a person could get while regurgitating half the bay.

Jake crawled between the two exhausted-looking women. ”Come on. You can finish being sick later. Right now we need to-”

But neither of them were listening to her, staring in horror instead at a ripple appearing suddenly on the murky water in the trapdoor opening.

Randy Dodd's face lunged up out of it, eyes narrowed into a glare of murderous fury and teeth bared. The rest of his big body followed; roaring, he heaved himself up at them.

”Oh, shut up,” said Bella tiredly, and stuck her fist out at his nose; it flattened like a tomato. His eyes rolled up whitely as he submerged again, the water closing around him.

Bella slammed the trapdoor shut. ”Nice one,” said Jake, and would have laughed bitterly. But she was already crying, because all of it was for nothing: Sam.

By now he must be dead; Carolyn Rathbone and Chip Hahn, too. Randy had taken them, and she doubted he'd set his captives up comfortably somewhere to wait for him. She would probably never even find Sam's body, never know- ”Come on,” she said again, eyeing the trapdoor unhappily. ”Let's just get out of here before that jerk decides to try using up another one of his nine lives.”

Bella helped Ellie as they struggled up the stairs, pausing to rest sometimes, and sometimes to weep. At the top, the rooms were as Jake had left them, dim and silent. The mingled smells of chlorine and stale beer hung in the still air.

Through the back window overlooking the breakwater, the bay spread out darkly. Some men were unloading something from a small boat, but from this distance she couldn't see what it was and she didn't care anymore, anyway.

She turned from the window. Bella and Ellie were in the bar area, on their way to the front door. Jake could hardly move her feet anymore, she was so exhausted suddenly, the taste of blood on her lips nauseatingly pungent.

Ellie looked back over her shoulder questioningly.

”Give me a minute,” Jake began, but then Ellie's expression changed. Turning slowly, Jake faced Roger Dodd, who stood behind her with a gun in his hand.

He put it to her head.

”I want Ellie and Bella to walk outside and get in Jake's car,” he said. ”Both in the front seat, Ellie driving.”

He nudged Jake's scalp with the gun. ”Toss her the keys.”

Jake found the car keys at the bottom of her pants pocket, tossed them. Ellie caught them as Roger went on, ”I'll be right behind.”

He marched Jake forward a few steps. ”If you do anything but what I tell you, or if you see anyone and try to talk to them or signal them, I'll blow her head off. Then I'll kill myself.”

So this was it. The endgame ... ”You and Randy were together on it all along, weren't you?” she said dully.

He didn't reply. ”Chip Hahn was right about you. I should have seen it, too. But you'd done the grief thing so well. Faked it, that is. And I got snowed by it, just like everyone else. Especially when you faked Sam's call.”

Because she'd wanted to believe ...

He nudged her again. ”It wasn't all fake. I loved Anne. But my brother, Randy ... well.” A humorless laugh escaped him. ”You may have noticed that he can be persuasive. Could be, rather.”

As was the gun to her head. ”He came up with the plan. If I went along with it and helped him, fine,” Roger explained. ”But if not-”

”He'd kill you, too.” She felt his nod of agreement in the movement of the gun barrel, now cold at the base of her skull.

And knew he was still lying. ”Do it, please,” she told Bella and Ellie. ”Do what he says. And, Bella, no heroics.”

Bella looked rebellious, but as it sank in that Roger Dodd was in control now, she nodded grimly; she and Ellie went out.

”They'll call help,” Jake said when they'd gone. ”The minute they get out there, they'll try to-”

Roger reached over the bar to the open cash drawer, scooped out the contents. ”n.o.body's around. They're all out searching.”

He stuffed the money into his jacket pocket. ”And anyway, if anyone tries to stop me, I'll do what I said.”

Kill her, he meant. ”You don't come back from a thing like this,” he said, marching her forward.

She spoke again. ”So you helped Randy disappear. You knew he'd come back to kill his wife, and then yours, so the two of you could inherit. That's the way you'd planned it.”

”The way he'd planned it,” Roger corrected her. ”I told you that already. My plan was to let him do the dirty work, then get rid of him.”

Keep talking, she thought. ”So the map, the fake money, they were all just-”

He laughed again. ”Window dressing. To give him something to think about, make him believe I was still on board. I told him if he got in trouble to leave the money where I could retrieve it.”

”So he made a map and planned to float it on the same buoy where you left the cash. The fake cash,” she said. ”So you'd know where he put it.”

”Right, so he could get out of the country without trying to smuggle it past customs.” He pushed the door open ahead of her. ”We'd try again to make the transfer sometime later, I told him.”

Outside it was dark and silent. ”But you double-crossed him, had the fake money all ready in advance?”

”Oh, for Christ's sake, of course I did. My plan was, he'd either get caught-if that happened I'd play victim, of course-or he'd figure it out about the money and when he came back for me, I'd be waiting for him, kill him in self-defense.”