Carolina Isle (28 page)

When they got to an area she recognized, she knew that the cave where Sara was was close. When she got to it, she called down to her cousin and said she was going to lower the kids down to her. Ariel wasn't strong enough to bring Sara up,
but she could use the rope to get the children down. The hole was cover, protection. They'd be safe there until help arrived. She looked up at the sky, but saw no rescuing helicopter. Did Phyllis call?

When Ariel told the children what she wanted to do, they were excited. She tied a loop in the end of the rope and Bertie put his foot in it. She put her pack on his back, then fastened the straps around the rope.

“Ready?” Ariel asked Sara. Ariel was standing on the tree that a short time before had taken Gideon's teasing to get her to walk out on. Below her was Sara, standing on one leg, leaning on what looked to be a makeshift crutch cut from a tree branch.

“I'm ready,” Sara said.

Ariel had to walk back down the tree to the ground, loop the rope around her waist, then slowly lower the child to the floor below. Sara steadied him, unfastened the pack straps, then sent it back up to Ariel.

Beatrice went down faster. As she went down, Ariel waved to her, her reassembled doll sticking out of the front of her pack.

After the children were down, Ariel ran along the tree to hang over the side and look at Sara. “Water and sandwiches are in the pack. I'll be back as soon as I can. Keep them quiet if you can. There are telephones on the island and a helicopter may come for us.”

“You're an angel!” Sara called up to her.

Smiling, Ariel went back to the ground. She'd been called an angel twice in one day.

The children had pointed the way to the old hot springs, but Ariel didn't follow the path. If anyone was watching, she'd be seen. She stayed close to the rocks and twice she saw what looked like newly made scuff marks. Had R.J. and Gideon gone this way?

She had gone about a mile and was wishing she'd kept a bottle of water when a hand came out of the bush and seized her ankle. If Ariel hadn't been so frightened, she would have screamed. In the next second, a hand went over her mouth and pulled her to the ground. She couldn't scream but she wasn't going down without a fight.

“Ariel! Ariel!” came an urgent voice in her ear. “If you don't stop fighting me they're going to hear us.”

“David?” she gasped, then threw her arms around his neck and began kissing him.

For a moment, he kissed her back, then pulled away. “Honey, sweetheart, now isn't the time for this. There are some seriously bad things going on and we need to address them.”

She didn't like his tone. She longed to tell him about how she and Gideon had rescued R.J., then she alone had found the twins and … but as he'd said, now wasn't the time.

“I want to tell you how to get back to Gideon's cabin,” David said. “Then you need to go through the woods to find some children. Ariel, you
can
do this. You need to put aside your fears to help these children.”

Yet another man was telling her to go away. “What do
you
plan to do?” she asked.

David rubbed his hand over his face. “So much has happened that I can't begin to tell you all that I need to do.”

“Why is your leg bleeding and why is there blood on your shirt?”

“I had to carry some huge kid, a teenager, nearly a mile. He'd fallen down some rocks and cut his head. Then there were these little kids—”

“And Larry Lassiter.”

“Yeah,” David said slowly, looking at her in surprise.

“Why does Lassiter think
you
know where Fenny's gold is?”

“Cosmic coincidence, but how do you know about that?”

“Long story. The twins are safe and a rescue helicopter may appear at any time. Do you know where R.J. and Gideon are? And where is Lassiter?” Ariel asked.

David was looking at her as though he'd never seen her before. “I escaped him. I gave him a bogus map and when he looked in a cave, I jumped.”

Ariel looked at him a moment, searching his eyes. She had known him all her life and she knew when he was hiding something. Reaching down to his leg, she pulled the fabric of his trousers apart. The gash in his leg was deep and he was losing blood.

“The last time you tore away fabric—” David said, smiling.

“That was ages ago,” Ariel said dismissively. “You need a doctor. I want you to tell me where
Fenny's gold really is, then I want you to stay here and hide.”

“And let you go out there? Alone? Not in my lifetime,” he said and started to rise. Immediately, the wound in his leg opened up and began to bleed.

“You move from here and I'll tell my mother I'm pregnant with R. J. Brompton's child.”

“She'll disown you,” David said, smiling.

“Then I'll go to New York and you'll never find me.”

“Ariel, really, this is ridiculous. You can't find the cave and—”

She got up, looked about, then took a step forward. She was leaving on her own and she knew he couldn't follow her.

“Okay,” he said. “There's a map in the front of my pack.”

She pulled the pack out of the bushes and unzipped the front pocket. “Is this the pack you found in the basement, then secretly filled when we got back from the pub?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I just didn't want to bother you.”

“Ha! You wanted to keep me from doing anything.
All of you have treated me as though I can do nothing, as though I'm just excess baggage. Worthless.”

“Not worthless. Not to me,” David said softly, his hand on her arm.

“David Tredwell, do you think I'm stupid? You've always wanted me for how you can use me. Do you think I don't know you want a political career? Do you think I don't know that I'd make a perfect wife for a politician? Do you think I don't know that you put up with anything I do to you because I fit into your ambitious little scheme so well? You were giving your kisses to that dim-witted, big-breasted Britney while I couldn't even get you to kiss my hand.”

“So all this with Brompton was to make me jealous?”

“Don't flatter yourself. I knew from the first that R.J. would treat me as a woman, not as a porcelain doll like you do.”

David fell back against the bushes and laughed. “And I thought I knew what you wanted. Miss Pommy—”

“Used to intimidate me because she holds the money, but not anymore. When I get out of here
I'm going to …” She pulled the map from the pack. “I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to make some changes in my life.”

“I hope you keep me in it,” David said softly.

“Maybe,” she said, looking at the map.

“Let me show you—”

“I can read a map.” She shoved the folded paper into her bra, then looked at him. “Stay here and be quiet. Listen for a helicopter.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, smiling.

Ariel took a bottle of water from his pack, looked out between the bushes, then on impulse, leaned down and kissed him. “You don't ever leave me behind again. Understand?”

“Never again,” he said. “Forever.”

“You got that right,” she said, then stepped up into the open.

David's map was easy to follow. She kept the water on her right, and when she saw a huge tree with half of it burned away by lightning, she put the map away. The rock looked solid, but when she tiptoed along a ledge with her arms spread out, she found a cut that overlapped itself. As she slipped through the narrow opening, she saw why Nezbit kept himself so thin. Most adults
couldn't fit between the rocks, but Ariel, at just a hundred and five pounds, could.

It was so dark inside the rock, she could see nothing. As she felt her way around, her heart was beating rapidly. A hidden place like this was a den snakes would love. When her hand touched an old-fashioned lantern, she sighed in relief. Next to it were matches. She knew how to light it—thanks to years of watching
Little House on the Prairie.

Holding the lantern aloft, she looked about the cave. It was tiny, about six feet by eight, with a stone floor and a roof that seemed to go up to infinity. Against the far wall was an old wooden fruit crate with things inside it. She put the lantern down and sat down by the crate.

Inside the crate were what looked to be the contents of a safe. Inside a plastic bag were two old, mildewed passports of Ray and Alice Erickson, age fifty-five and fifty-six, ownership papers of a forty-eight-foot sailboat, and a last will and testament. Beside the packet of papers was a jewelry box, a big thing made of mahogany, with lots of little drawers and two handles on the side.

Ariel lifted the lid, surprised it wasn't locked,
but then who else could find the place besides Fenny Nezbit? And David, Ariel thought.

The jewelry chest was nearly empty, only two pairs of earrings inside, but the velvet lining showed the imprint of many other pieces of jewelry.

Legends, myths and, ultimately, a murder, all caused by the contents of a woman's jewelry chest.

Leaning back against the wall, Ariel opened the last will and testament and read it. Ray and Alice Erickson left everything to their son and daughter, to be split equally between them. There was a codicil attached and it told everything. Two people had retired after years of running a successful jewelry store, sold everything they owned, and bought a sailboat. They apologized to their children for their seeming irrationality, but they were sick of working six days a week. They said they planned to take the best of the jewelry with them, as they had one last deal to make in Saudi Arabia.

“They never made it,” Ariel whispered, folding the will and putting it back in the bag. It seemed that they'd wrecked their new sailboat and their
treasure had been stolen and gradually sold by Fenny Nezbit.

Ariel wondered if he'd killed Mr. and Mrs. Erickson. “No one will ever know,” she said aloud.

She put the last two pairs of earrings in the bag with the papers and shoved it down the back of her trousers. As she took a step toward the opening, she heard a sound. She leaped the next few feet to the door and looked up. It was a rescue helicopter!

Stepping to the edge, she waved her arms and the pilot saw her. He turned around and another man, the copilot, used a bullhorn to ask, “Are you injured?”

“No!” Ariel yelled and shook her head, then she pointed to her right with both her arms. The injured people were that way.

“We have all the others,” the man said through his horn. “Go to the ground and we'll pick you up.”

Ariel said, “Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes” all the way down. She slipped once, then took a deep breath and went down more slowly.

The helicopter landed and she ran to it, ducking against the wind of the blades. “Are you Ariel
Weatherly?” the copilot asked and she yelled, “Yes!”

She scrambled into the backseat. Part of her wanted to cry in relief and part of her felt elated. Exhilarated.

The copilot turned to her and pointed down. On the ground below them was an ambulance. R.J. was standing by a police car, a twin on each side of him, each holding one of his hands. Four big North Carolina policemen were helping two handcuffed people into the cars: Larry Lassiter and Eula Nezbit. David, Sara, and Gideon were missing, but Ariel figured they were being treated for their injuries. She leaned back against the seat and smiled as King's Isle was left in the background and they headed toward Arundel.

She was going home.

“T
O US!”
R.J.
SAID, RAISING HIS CHAM
pagne glass high.

The four of them were in the pub on King's Isle, which was empty except for them. But then R.J. now owned the place so they could do what they wanted. It was over a year since they'd first arrived on King's Isle and many things had changed since then.

“To my brilliant wife,” R.J. said, looking at Sara with loving eyes. “And here's to winning an Emmy.”

“Thank you,” Sara said, lifting her glass of orange juice. She was six weeks pregnant.

“And to mine,” David said, lifting his glass to Ariel. “Who would have known you could write?”

“No one believed I could do anything,” Ariel said, “including me.”

“Your script was brilliant,” Sara said, “and I thank you very much for it. I don't know where I'm going from here, but I enjoyed every minute of working on our movie.”

David again lifted his drink to Ariel. “To my wife, a woman I thought I knew but didn't.”

R.J. looked at Sara. “And to
my
wife, who never had an idea that I hired her because I loved her.”

Ariel looked at R.J. “Thank you for taking my script to an agent.”

“Wait a minute!” David said.
“I
was the one who read it and
I
was the one who took it to R.J.”

“And I was the one who took it from him,” Sara said.

“And changed it,” Ariel said.

“Tweaked it,” Sara answered.

Four weeks after they'd left King's Isle, Ariel found out she was pregnant with David's baby. A
wedding was rushed through, but thanks to her mother's years of planning, it was not going to be a small affair. Between Southern society and R.J.'s contacts, it would be the wedding of the year. Three days before the wedding, Sara asked if Ariel would mind very much making it a double. A gown was bought, more champagne purchased, and there was a wedding that Arundel wouldn't soon forget.

For the next eight months, Ariel was hovered over by her mother and David and his mother. Bored, Ariel began to write about what happened to them on King's Isle. Somehow, the story seemed to gradually evolve into a script. She ordered a book on script writing, followed the format as best she could, and put their adventure onto paper.

She loved dramatizing how Lassiter and Fenny had quarreled, then the lawyer had shot Fenny through the head. It had been Eula who'd helped him carry the body up Phyllis's creaking stairs, hiding it in the bathtub. “Let those fancy folk from Arundel take the blame,” Eula had said.