Baited (8 page)

He’s dead, along with Duffy and Nestor and the rest of the crew. Stop torturing yourself by believing he’s going to come back to you.

The worst part? There wasn’t a damned thing she could do to make up for it.

A sob thrust its way out of her chest, and she held it back, covering her face. Exhaustion mingled with her loss, and she fell helpless under the power of them both. “Kat?”

She felt Chris’s hand on her arm.

Angrily, she brushed away her tears. “I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not,” said Duke in a frail voice. “None of us are.”

“But I
am,
” she said, hating that she was sniffling. Pissed, she willed the sadness to stop. All she had to do was pretend she was underwater, filtering out the fear.

“I can take care of myself.” She inhaled, then blew out a cleansing breath. There. Better.

Duke’s laugh was weak, yet genuine. “You’ve got spark, Kat. You’re the best…”

She helped him finish the feel-good mantra. “…whether I know it or not.”

They both laughed. Better now. Much better.

“Gramps always tells me what gumption you’ve got.” Chris obviously felt special about being Duke’s confidant. “He always says how cool you are, and that you never take garbage from anyone.”

Except herself, she thought.

“She learned to overcome the odds from her dad,” Duke said, closing his eyes to rest.

Kat stroked Duke’s damp forehead, comforting him. “And my mom.”

She hadn’t realized she’d said it until the words echoed in the aftermath.

“I thought she died before you were really old enough to know her,” Duke whispered.

“I was three.”

Fleetingly, images came to Kat: tatami mats covering the floor, a beautifully arranged dinner on the table, the graceful curve of her mom’s arm as she held Kat to her shoulder, the lilt of her soft voice as Mariko sang her daughter to sleep amidst the scent of her flowered perfume.

Now Kat was calmed, as if she was floating in the quiet of water. No fear. No sadness. Just peace, an affinity with everything around her. Her mom would’ve reacted this gracefully to problems. Dad had always told her so.

“I wish,” Kat said, “I’d known her. I wonder how different my life would be. Would I have been less of a tomboy?”

Would she have developed such an attitude about the world?

“You got that from your dad,” Duke said, referring to the tomboy part.

“How did they meet?” Chris asked. “Your mom and dad?”

Kat knew what they were doing. Avoidance. They didn’t want to see her cry—God, she didn’t want that, either—so they were doing their best to distract her. She adored them for it.

“My dad was a lieutenant in the army at Camp Zama. My mom was—” An outcast.
Eta
. “—eager to escape. She loved everything western, Dad told me. And when they saw each other at a market in Sagamihara, it was love at first sight. She wanted to see the States, so when he was discharged, he took her.” Kat’s chest warmed. “Whenever he’d talk about her, he’d get this silly grin, then become so sad. He loved my mom so much and, after she was in that car accident, he never recovered.”

“Have you ever been to Japan?” Chris asked.

“I could never afford it. And, really, I have to say I wasn’t too interested.” Not until now, when the idea suddenly seemed so important. So impossible. “My grandparents were shamed by my mom’s behavior, marrying a
gaijin
—a foreigner. And to make matters worse, he was like a lower level
gaijin
, with dark hair and eyes. A mixed-blood granddaughter isn’t exactly something to brag about. Even though they wrote the occasional letter to me, I didn’t feel a lot of love or tolerance.”

Ironic, Kat thought sadly, because as
burakumin
—social outcasts themselves—her grandparents should’ve known better.

“Mixed blood,” Chris said. “You make it sound bad.”

“The Japanese word is
konketsujin
. And, if you’d had to grow up with all the idiotic comments I had to hear from the kids at school, you’d think it was bad, too.”

“Bullies.”

“Yeah, bullies.”

They smiled at each other, the goofy rich kid and the bristly misfit at a complete understanding.

“So,” he said, “who taught you how to surf?”

“My dad.” Kat’s smile grew softer. “Those were the best times we had together, me and him. Not many girls from my area hung at the beach, but it was the best way for me to avoid…well, let’s just say ‘after-school activities.’”

In the water, none of their taunts could touch her. It had just been her and her dad, floating, her depending on him until, one day, she’d had the power to swim by herself, away from him. Never really to return.

Kat sighed. “He died long ago.”

Chris just nodded, and they lapsed into silence, leaving Kat to mull over her regrets. Why had she and her father drifted apart anyway? Did it happen when he’d started seeing another woman seriously—the first real girlfriend he’d had since Mariko’s death?

Was it because Kat saw that woman as just another girl who embraced the ’hood philosophy, complete with bad attitude and justifications for not succeeding in life? For not giving her all in school, for not having higher expectations of herself?

Kat noticed that Duke had zoned off to sleep again.
She tucked the life jackets over him, hoping they would keep him warm. Chris, too, was getting heavy-lidded, but he was clearly fighting it, intent on watching over Duke.

He’ll keep his granddad safe, Kat thought. He’ll keep better watch over him than I did with my own dad.

As long-overdue sleep took her, too, she was faintly aware of footsteps. Tink and Larry, back from the cave?

She’d hear all about their findings later, after…

A blank darkness washed over her, blissful rest which blocked out all her pain, all thoughts of Will who, even now, might be out there, calling her name.

She heard it so clearly.

Kat. Kat!

K…

Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!

She flew upward, clutching at her chest, confused, rocked by a heartbeat that thundered through her.

Tinkerbell was standing at the entrance to the shelter, eyes bugged out as she yelled.

“Help! Damn, Kat, help us!”

Scrambling to her feet, Kat was the first one up, already unsheathing her knife. The rest of them—Louis, Eloise, Alexandra, Chris, Dr. Hopkins and Duke—bolted awake, too.

“What’s wrong?” Kat darted over to Tinkerbell.

“Body,” the crew member said, voice cracking like a jag of lightning. “We found a body on the way to the beach.”

D
uffy was dead.

From all appearances, he’d been tossed around the ocean and rocks. Even underneath the mud slathered on his body, Kat could see that his face was severely cut, folds of skin peeling away from what was once an ex-football-star buff. His body bore the telltale signs of his painful struggle to get to land.

But, she thought, gathering her courage and bending down so she could get a better look, all this mud told her that he’d probably crawled
onto
land. From there, he could’ve followed the arrows to the cave until he couldn’t move another inch. There was even wet dirt caked under his fingernails.

“We were just on our way to the beach to do more
scrounging since the rain had let up,” Larry said as he kept a wary eye on the understandably upset Tink.

Kat had told the Delacroixs that she would come here and make a positive ID for them, even though it was a silly promise. All the lost passengers and crew were built differently, so it wouldn’t have been hard to tell them apart, to accept Tink’s word for Duffy’s death.

As Kat stood back up, her legs shook, threatening to take her down. But she wasn’t just upset about the effect Duffy’s death would have on Duke. And her stomach wasn’t turning just because she felt sorry for Duffy.

It’s because this isn’t Will, she thought, a little ashamed of her relieved elation.

Tink was running a hand through her rain-spiked red hair. She’d had this same look on her face after Duffy had tangled with Kat on the boat: angry, accusatory. Why?

“So what should we do?” the crew woman asked.

“Bury him,” Larry said. “The last thing we need is some animal smelling carrion.”

He didn’t seem real mournful about Duffy, either. Kat recalled what he’d said back on the boat.

Beat them all to shreds. That’s what I say.

As Kat glanced at Duffy again, she surprised herself. She wasn’t seeing a total villain so much as a lost little boy in a big man’s body, a jerk who hadn’t known how to interact with everyone else.

“I think,” Kat whispered, “we should ask the Delacroix family what they want. Maybe they’ll want a last look for some closure.”

She thought of how Louis and Eloise had broken down at Tinkerbell’s news, thought of how Alexandra had sunk to the floor, steely-eyed, while holding back her grief, thought of Chris and how he’d started shaking and clinging to Duke, who was himself sobbing heavily.

Larry shrugged. “Okay. I guess he’s far enough from our camp to keep the hungry creepy-crawlies away.”

Tink started back toward the shelter. Larry hung behind with Kat.

“Neither one of you is sorry to see Duffy go,” Kat said. “I wasn’t his number-one fan, but still—”

“Better him than us.” They began walking. “Imagine having him on this island. How long would it have taken for him to pull out that Richie Rich entitlement crap and attack you or even Tink?”

Kat couldn’t disagree. But when she didn’t answer, Larry added, “Tink wasn’t comfortable around him, you know. I’m happy about seeing him gone just for her sake alone.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say Tink don’t take kindly to seeing
any
woman assaulted.”

With a look that hinted at much more, Larry took off at a jog, catching up to his friend. He settled a protective arm around her shoulders, big-brother like.

As Kat followed the united crew members, she couldn’t help another twinge of isolation. She wished she had someone to fully connect with, too.

But Will was gone, and there was no longer a chance to work everything out, for her to have that someone.

When they returned, the trio was greeted tentatively by the group; there was a glimmer of expectation, as if Kat might tell them that the body wasn’t Duffy’s or Nestor’s after all.

It killed her not to have better news.

Afterward, while wailing at Duffy’s death, Eloise crawled over to her father, who took her in his arms and soothed her. Louis turned to Duke, also. Alexandra remained on the outside of their circle, hugging herself and grinding her teeth. Chris balled his body into a fetal shell, burying his face against his knees and rocking back and forth protectively.

Dr. Hopkins was the only one cognizant enough to ask for details. After Kat finished whispering them to her, the wounded woman asked, “You think anyone is still alive?”

Was she asking about Nestor?

“Yeah,” Kat answered, again slightly stunned because it sounded as if the doctor was looking to her for answers…like everyone else. “I know they’re out there. But…” When she realized her hands were fisted, she relaxed them. “I feel so powerless.”

The doctor held up her own palms. “This is the definition of powerless, honey.”

Alexandra had bandaged them with a salvaged rain-washed blouse.

Soon, the Delacroixs had run out of tears and there was nothing left to do but wait. Rain dripped from the shelter’s overhang like back-up notes in the bigger song of the storm. The precipitation had eased off a little, but the ocean was still churning, the sky spotted
with black and gray clouds that spat occasional lightning.

“Kat, we need fire,” Larry grumbled. “We could go inside those deeper caves for better shelter if we had light.”

Earlier, Tinkerbell had revealed that she and Larry had found a network of caves that branched off from this shelter. They’d also discovered armfuls of wood—small, dry pieces that had probably been blown inside by the wind before the storm had come. It looked like enough to keep a fire going for a decent time.

But how would they even get one started?

Kat’s mind whirled with ideas from her dad’s military stories. Maybe if they could fashion some kind of bow and a stick for friction, or find decent, dry rocks?

She stood abruptly. Man, she couldn’t just sit here. There were a million things to do. First she wanted to know what should happen with Duffy’s body, but she was hesitant to ask the Delacroixs on the tail end of their shock. She was also itching to get back out to the beach and see what else had washed up.

To see if any other bodies were waiting for them.

The sound of plastic rattling came from behind her. She turned around to find Larry gripping an empty potato chip bag. There was a pile of them in the corner that she hadn’t noticed before.

“What the hell is this?” he asked.

Louis’s voice was flat when he answered. “It was food. We ate some.”

Kat took a few steps closer, prepared to stop another fight.

“Some?” Larry kicked at the empty bags. “That was the only food we’ve found. And you know what? I’ve been working all day while you people have sat on your asses. I’m
goddamn hungry!
”

Eyes on Larry, Duke slowly shifted backward. Eloise held still in his arms and Louis flanked his other side. His movement unleashed a muffled crinkle of plastic. The sound reverberated through the shelter.

Larry darted over, bending past Eloise and Duke. “Are you hiding something? What’ve you got?”

“Larry!” Kat bounded over, then pulled him back. Anger was burning beneath her own skin, but it wasn’t because Larry was getting aggressive.

Those potato chips
had
been their only food. Had the Delacroixs eaten all of it while everyone had napped earlier? What had happened while she’d been asleep? Larry held up a full bag for Kat to see, dangling it in front of her face, then showing it to the crowd.

“Trying to hold out on the peons, huh?”

Alexandra finally said something. “We were rationing.”

Rationing? A flare of distrust and rage urged Kat to let go of Larry. She faced Alexandra. “Who the hell are you to ration? And just how much were you going to get compared to the rest of us?”

The rich girl lifted her chin, cold as a slick of ice over the ground, making each of Kat’s steps a dangerous one.

Duke interrupted. “Kat, please don’t jump to—”

“What?” She was on fire. “Who do you think you are? Is there some kind of social order here?”

Duke flinched, his eyes hazy from pain and her words. Had she gone too far?

Immediately, the fighter in her answered.
Yeah, Kat, have you overstepped your place? How dare you speak up for yourself to these golden people? How dare you demand the same privileges?

Duke and his family must’ve seen murder in her eyes.

“I was making sure Chris would get his fill,” he said softly. “That’s all.”

Chris hadn’t moved. It was like he’d escaped into his own place, balled up with his face hidden. Dammit, he shouldn’t have to deal with confrontations like this on top of every other horror.

But what was Duke saying? Was he just assuming that everyone was going to step aside for Chris, the new heir to the fortune?

Kat tilted her head as another thought weighed her down. “Do you actually think it’s okay to cheat the people who’ve been working to help everyone survive?”

Duke’s skin colored, and Kat almost choked on the bitter realization that he
did
think that way.

“Give us our share,” Larry said. “
Now
.”

In response Duke looked to Kat, maybe thinking that she’d speak up for him as usual. But for the first time she couldn’t see how protecting him was the right thing to do. All of them needed sustenance and, sure, if it came right down to it, she’d give Chris some of hers, just because she could deal without a few extra chips. But to be
expected
to do it…

She held out her hands, asking for the hidden cache.

While Tink, Larry and Kat ate their first meal of the day, her mentor couldn’t have looked more betrayed. Hell, was he really so miffed about what his family had done?

Afterward, Kat gathered the rest of the food in the center of the room, grabbed the screwdriver and gave it to Tinkerbell.

“Watch the eats, okay?”

Then Kat started to walk out of the shelter.

“Where’re you going?”

It was Dr. Hopkins. Next to her, Chris peeked out of his self-imposed exile, his face pleading for her to stay. They both looked stricken by her leaving.

But she couldn’t hang around for moral support. “I’m going to bring back more food. Larry, come on.”

“But…” The dreadlocked guy pointed to the chips.

“Oh, those
will
be here when we get back.” Kat looked each person in the eye. The Delacroixs and Duke glanced at the ground, giving way to Kat’s demand. “And we’ll have more food, too.”

She hoped. Good Lord, she hoped.

With that, they ducked into the plodding rain.

By the time the weather began fully crashing down again, Kat and Larry had found one measly netted bag of apples, a ruined packet of rice and a small suitcase that contained but a few of Dr. Hopkins’s possessions. Hoping to find more, they climbed over a group of rocks to get to the adjacent beach. There, nothing but driftwood littered the sand. They would come back for that later.

“There’s nothing here,” Larry said, yelling over the wind, which in the past few minutes had picked up to a whistling roar.

Pointing in their shelter’s direction, Kat nodded. But just as they moved toward the rocks again, she saw it.

A man in torn clothing, stumbling toward them, yelling.

Adrenaline kicked Kat into a run. Larry followed.

Tall. Built like him. Was it…?

The man fell to his knees, laughing, panting, reaching for her.

“Will?” she yelled. “Will?”

Her brain felt numb, blindsided.

Will. Here. Alive!

Both she and Larry skidded to a stop, burying their knees in the sand as they wrapped their arms around him, bowling him over. Electrified with happiness, Kat laughed until she was weak. Will yowled, probably in pain, so they backed off. They were acting like fools in the eye of a hurricane, but why not?

He was alive. She knew it. Dammit, she knew it! Well, she’d
hoped
, somewhere beneath all that pessimism.

As they got over the shock, a forceful wave pounded the shore ten feet from them.

“Let’s get back!” Kat tried to help Will…yes, Will!…to his feet. She was near to bursting, giddy as a young girl who’d seen a dream come to life.

He shook his head as she told him about their camp and pulled him in that direction. Gesturing to higher
ground where there was an overhang like the one her group had found, he said, “Kat, help me get my stuff from up there first.” He signaled for Larry to take the apples and suitcase. “We’ll see you back at your place.”

With a wink and a hearty pat on the shoulder that made Will heave in a slight breath, Larry bounded back toward the original shelter. Good thing, Kat thought, because Tink was probably having a fun time guarding those chips.

Will’s limp was pronounced as he took her to his dank and dreary shelter. He’d settled under a rocky ledge, which provided overhead coverage while bushes lined the sides. A life jacket, a power flashlight, a coil of rope, three kitchen steak knives and a duffel bag with clothing strewn over the ground were all his supplies.

Kat couldn’t contain herself. Throwing away every pretense, she embraced him again.

“I was hoping…” she began.

“Me, too.”

They held each other until she gave him an extra-strength hug that made him suck in a breath.

She backed away, heart twisting. “You’re hurt!” But then, hungrily, she touched his face, running her fingers over his skin, giddy just to know that he was in one piece.

Will…right here…

“I don’t hurt that much.” He put a hand to his ribs. “Maybe here. Bruised. But it’s nothing. I was keeping watch for anything helpful from the wreckage when you two popped up out of the clear blue. I—” He stopped, voice strangled. “God, Kat. I can’t believe it.”

Neither of them said anything for a minute. Instead,
they just stared at each other. She couldn’t believe this, either. Will. Alive, alive, alive.

“Wow,” was all she could say.

“Exactly. I thought maybe I’d see other survivors after a rescue, but…”

The rain thrashed against the bushes, sending a stream of cold air past them. His green-blue eyes were exhausted, but glowing. She took that as a good sign. A sign that he would be just as excited about taking advantage of second chances as she was.