Carolina Isle (27 page)

“Sorry about what I said. We King's Islanders are a bit standoffish with outsiders.”

“Don't get me started,” Ariel said. “I'm going to recommend this place for atomic bomb testing.”

“We're not that bad,” he said. He was trying to keep up with her but with every step he was wincing in pain.

“Are those children yours? Phyllis said they aren't, but—”

“You've been talking to Eula.”

“Your mother.”

“I don't think so. I think she—”

Ariel held up her hand. “The less I hear about the people on this island, the better I like it. Tell me about R.J. and Sara.”

“Her leg is broken. She's okay, but she's in pain. They went off by themselves yesterday but I followed them. The twins must have followed me. A tree came down in the storm and I thought it had hit them, but by the time I got to them they'd fallen into a hole. This area is pocketed
with them. I climbed over the tree to get to them, but then the lightning flashed and I saw the kids. I also saw a person behind them. R.J. and Sara seemed to be okay, so I went after the kids. It was raining hard and I couldn't see much, couldn't hear anything. I climbed all over the mountain. I went to the springs, and I—”

“The hot springs?”

“What used to be hot springs.”

“Did you see the children?”

“Yes. I saw them twice and each time I thought I saw someone with them.”

“Old? Young? Man or woman?” asked Ariel.

“It was too dark to see.”

“How did you hurt your head?”

“There was a sound. It was like a shot, but it could have been lightning striking a tree. I don't know. One minute I was standing, then the next I was falling. I tried to catch myself, but it was all loose gravel. I thought I'd fallen into one of the pits, but it must have been down a hillside. I think I was knocked unconscious.”

“How did you get back to the cabin?”

“I don't know. I was lying on gravel, rain was hitting me in the face, my head hurt, then the
next thing I knew I was on my own porch and an angel hit me in the face with a wet towel.”

Ariel didn't smile. “David must have found you.”

“Who is David?”

“Did you see a man, tall, blond, handsome. Beautiful, really. He left Phyllis's house early this morning.”

“I saw no beautiful men,” Gideon said. “And no beautiful twins.” Again, there were tears in his voice.

“We'll find them. I think that first we should—”

“Get R.J. and Sara out. What took me so long to get here was that I got a winch and some rope. The tree fell across the hole. I'll tie the winch onto the tree and haul them up. You can stay with Sara while R.J. and I look for the twins.”

“You're injured, so
you
stay with Sara.”

Gideon gave her a sideways look. “I bet you rule your household, don't you?”

“I don't have a household. I live with my mother and she rules everybody.”

“Rules
you?”
Gideon asked, then before she could answer, he said, “There it is,” and began to hurry forward.

Following him, Ariel saw that he was limping, skipping now and then to stay off an injured ankle and foot. There was dried blood on his neck and his shirt, and a long tear in the back of his shirt, covered in more dried blood. She had an idea that he had many more injuries than could be seen. He should be in a hospital, she thought.

Minutes later, she saw him stretched out on the ground, most of his body covered by the branches of a big pine tree. When she reached him, she looked down to see R.J. standing about twenty feet below.

“Ariel!” he said. “What are
you
doing here?”

She was disgusted at yet again hearing that tone that said
she
could be of no help. “I heard there was a rare form of lizard up here and I need some new belts.”

R.J. looked at her in silence, as though he didn't know if she was serious or not.

“I came to save the lot of you,” she said. “How is Sara?”

“I'm fine,” Sara called from the corner. “I just have a broken leg and a great need of painkillers. Opium, I need you!”

“Have you seen the children?” Ariel called down.

When R.J. and Sara were silent, Ariel looked at Gideon.

“They had enough to worry about, so I didn't tell them the kids were missing.”

“The twins!” Sara said to R.J., then looked up at Ariel. “Get R.J. out and you three go looking for them. I'm safe here. Please hurry. How long have they been missing?”

“Too many hours,” Gideon said. When he tried to get up, he stumbled and nearly fell into the pit, but Ariel put her body in front of his and steadied him.

“What happened to you?” R.J. called up.

“He fell down some rocks,” Ariel said. “I think David may have carried him back to his cabin.”

“Where is David now?” R.J. asked.

“I don't know,” Ariel said, pushing on Gideon to get him away from the edge. “How do we get them out?”

Gideon pulled a big metal winch from his pack and a heavy nylon rope. “I'll tie this onto the middle of the tree, put a rope through here, then I'll pull R.J. up.”

Ariel looked at the tree. Standing upright, she was sure it would look enormous, but lying down across an open hole it looked like a tightrope with branches. “You'll fall,” she said.

“That's a chance I'll have to take.”

She put her hand on his forearm. “The only knot I know how to tie is a shoelace. Show me what to do and
I
will do it.” When he started to protest, she said, “If you do fall, it'll be just me here to get all of you out and to go find the twins. If I fall, there'll still be you and R.J. to look for them.”

Gideon didn't argue, just demonstrated a solid knot to use to tie the winch to the tree. “Keep your eyes on the tree,” he said as he tied a rope onto her waist.

Ariel kept twisting about to look at the narrow tree. Could she do it? The more she looked, the weaker her knees felt.

“So who's this beautiful man you're searching for?” Gideon asked.

“You're too young to know and it doesn't matter anyway because I'm going to kill him the minute I see him.”

“Oh, yeah?” Gideon said. His face was inches
from hers and his arms around her as he tied the rope about her waist. “I could think of worse ways to go than to be killed by you.”

“I am
not
Phyllis,” she said coldly as she moved away from him and toward the tree.

“Indeed you aren't,” Gideon said, unperturbed by her coolness.

Ariel didn't like his insinuations, didn't like his flirting, and didn't like his levity in the face of the situation. She was so angry at him that she was halfway to the center of the tree before she realized it. When she looked down and saw R.J. and Sara far below her, she froze.

She looked back over her shoulder at Gideon.

“In those pants you look as cute as Phyllis,” Gideon said, leering at her. “Are you sure you didn't grow up on King's Isle?”

“I'm from Arundel, North Carolina,” Ariel said and there was so much pride in her voice that R.J. laughed.

“That's right, honey,” R.J. called up to her. “You tell him.”

Ariel reached the center of the tree and looked back at Gideon in triumph. He was rubbing
the side of his head but he was smiling at her.

“Okay, baby,” Gideon said, “now straddle the tree like a man and tie him into a knot.”

Ariel sat down on the tree, looked down at R.J., and said, “Who
is
this child?”

“I don't know, but I plan to find out,” he said softly.

Ariel concentrated as she tied the winch onto the tree, then threaded the rope through the pulley as Gideon had shown her. Cautiously, she made her way back to the young man, then helped him pull the rope with R.J. on it up to the top of the hole.

When R.J. stepped onto land he grabbed Ariel's shoulders and kissed her hard on the mouth.

“Hey! I saw that!” Sara called from below. “He's mine, cousin.”

“Oh?” Ariel asked, looking at R.J.

“We talked about some things,” R.J. said sheepishly.

“Talked?” Ariel asked. “Your shirt is on inside out.”

“Ah. Well … there are a lot of ways to communicate.”

Gideon, coiling the rope around his arm, came to them. There was no more laughter on his face. “R.J., you and I are going to have to separate. Ariel, I want you to go back to town and organize a search party. Get every person you can find and get back up here as fast as possible.”

Ariel didn't argue with him, just grabbed her pack and started back down the trail they'd come on. She was cursing Phyllis and all the residents of King's Isle with each step she took. She no longer cared who killed Fenny Nezbit. Obviously, he'd been killed out of greed. Someone wanted his gold.

She was just a short distance from Gideon's cabin when something bright pink on the ground caught her eye. Picking it up, she saw it was a tiny plastic high-heeled shoe. A shoe for a fashion doll.

She cut off the trail into the woods. She walked slowly, on the lookout for snakes, but also searching for any bright colors. The grasses seemed to have been trampled recently, but she wasn't sure.

When she saw a broken branch, her heart sped up. Fifty feet away was another tiny shoe. Holding it, she thought, Now what do I do? Did she stop there and go back to find the men? That would take at least an hour, and an hour lost looking for small children could mean life or death.

Also there was the surprise element. What if Gideon was right and there had been someone with the twins? There was a murderer on King's Isle. What if he—

She didn't think anymore. She put the shoes in her pocket, then started walking slowly and quietly—much quieter than three people could walk, she told herself.

Every seventy-five feet or so, she found another piece: sunglasses, Capri pants, a cute little peasant blouse. Tiny earrings had been placed on a rock.

When Ariel found the first body part, she wanted to sit down and cry. Poor little girl, having to disassemble her doll.

There were legs and arms, but after the torso, there was nothing. Ariel walked across what looked to be crushed grass, but even after a hundred
yards, she saw nothing more. There were no broken branches, no doll parts, nothing.

She was about to turn back when something made her go right. It wasn't a sound, but a smell. A fragrance she knew as well as she knew her own body. David.

For a moment, she closed her eyes, then turned around in a circle, breathing deeply. When she stopped, she opened her eyes and smiled, then walked straight ahead, over rocks, through leaves, across a fallen tree. There, lying on the ground, under a ledge of rock, their hands bound together, their mouths gagged, were two beautiful little children.

As much as Ariel wanted to run to them, she crouched down behind a rock and waited and listened. She heard and saw nothing. Cautiously, she stepped into the open. When no one leaped out at her, she went to the children and untied them.

They clung to her, but they didn't cry, and when they called her Sara, she didn't correct them. She pulled them back under the rock with her, one on each side, and asked them
their names. “Tell me every word of what happened.”

“We followed Gideon,” Bertie said.

“But we got lost.”

“And it rained on us.”

“Who tied you up?” Ariel asked.

“Mr. Larry.”

“Larry Lassiter,” Ariel said, unsurprised. “Was there another man here?”

“David,” Beatrice said with a little flutter of her lashes. “He saved us.”

“But Mr. Larry said he'd kill us unless David went with him, so he went.”

“Why did he want David?” Ariel asked.

“He knows where the gold is.”

“David knows where the gold is?!” Ariel said. “Are you sure of that?”

Bertie moved away from Ariel and out from under the overhang. He held an imaginary gun on Beatrice. “‘You know what I want, don't you, kid?'”

“‘Yeah, I know,'” Beatrice said in a voice that sounded remarkably like David's. “‘How did you find out?'”

“‘I looked you up on the Internet and read your paper. “The Weird Man's Hideout.” Was that the title?'”

“‘More or less,'” Beatrice said. “‘Let me take the kids back to safety, then I'll go with you.'”

“‘Naw. They're fine here,'” Bertie said, waving his finger around like Ariel had seen Lassiter do. “‘Somebody'll find them.'”

“‘You can't leave them here! They'll die of exposure.'”

“‘They're tough little brats. They're used to hiding to get away from their mother. Ain't you, kids?'”

The twins stopped talking and looked at Ariel.

“Where did they go?” Ariel asked.

The children shrugged. How could they know when they'd been tied up?

Ariel had an idea. “Do you know where the hot springs are?”

“Sure,” Bertie said. “We go there with Gideon all the time. It's how he gives us a bath.”

Ariel smiled. “Can you lead me there?”

“Sure.”

She turned to look at Beatrice and saw that in her hand was the head of her doll. Ariel reached
into her pocket and pulled out doll pieces and clothes. “As we walk, I bet I can put her back together.”

For the first time, she saw tears in the child's eyes. No child should be this tough, she thought.

“Can you?” Beatrice asked.

“I'm sure of it,” Ariel said.

A
RIEL DIDN'T WANT THE CHILDREN WITH
her when she found David. If that horrible man Lassiter had a gun, the last thing she wanted was children around. She knew that if she took them back to Gideon's cabin they'd not stay there. Besides, that would take too long.