Eyes of Fire (28 page)

Right now she had to find Adam. She started to move. Sukee grabbed her ankle, trying to trip her.

“Could someone please take care of Sukee?” she asked politely.

“They just shot Joey,” Sue said. “You bet I'll take care of her.”

Perhaps that wasn't such a good idea, but Sam couldn't waste any more time on Sukee. Besides, she realized, as she went over the side, Sue wasn't a vicious killer. Sue wasn't a killer at all. She was just in love with a man who came from a family with a shady past.

Joey's father had killed hers.

Her mother had killed his father.

Sweet Jesus…

No more killing. No more deaths.

She went over the side.

Her dive gear gave her the same advantage Adam had used to sweep her away from the Emersons. She sank down a good fifteen feet, grateful that dawn was breaking, that she was also being given the advantage of the light that was just beginning to break through the water. She could see the kicking legs of all three men.

Jem was perhaps twenty feet from the other two.

Liam Hinnerman was still in possession of his gun and still shooting. But he was finding it almost impossible to get a good shot at Adam in the midst of the waves that were buffeting him.

Adam…

Adam was perhaps fifty feet from her. Diving, rising, diving, rising.

Trying to beat the waves and avoid Hinnerman's shots at the same time.

She swam toward Adam.

Tugged on his feet. Jerked his ankles.

He came shooting downward in front of her. To her amazement, he was smiling. Her weights balanced them against the buoyancy of the water. They went pitching downward together for a long moment. She started to offer him her regulator so he could breathe, but he pulled her mouthpiece away for a moment instead, gripped her head and kissed her hard as they plummeted.

Interesting way to drown….

But they didn't drown. Adam released her, sharing her air. He motioned, indicating Jem, and she knew he was telling her that they had to do something to help Jem.

When she realized what he wanted to do, she shook her head fervently.

He nodded.

She couldn't stop him.

He was going to bait Hinnerman. Force the man to keep taking potshots at him.

Sam was to drag Hinnerman down until Adam could turn and struggle with the man.

“No!” she mouthed.

Adam was already gone.

Even in a shirt and jeans, he was still amazingly smooth and supple in the water, like a dolphin. He went streaking by Hinnerman, who fired.

Again…

How many bullets were in that damned gun? How many had he used?

Sam didn't know, but she heard the peculiar sound of another bullet streaking through the water. She couldn't bear it anymore.

Time to move.

She filled her vest with air and shot upward with a prayer, directly beneath Hinnerman. He was kicking madly against the waves, looking out at the water surrounding him. Looking for Adam to surface.

She caught his feet and dragged him downward with all her strength.

He catapulted down, startled by her attack. Then he tried to recover, doubling over, reaching for her.

He was stronger than she was, and in damned good shape. He worked out. He was powerful.

He reached for her regulator, ripping the mouthpiece from her. She lost her mask as his fingers wound around her throat.

He raised his left hand. Aiming the gun directly into her face.

He smiled as he prepared to fire.

His arm was suddenly jerked upward, and he fired. A bullet ripped toward the surface of the water, missing Sam by mere inches.

It had been intended for her face….

But Hinnerman couldn't fire again. Adam's fingers were around his throat, and the man was turning blue. His eyes were beginning to bulge, his tongue to protrude. He tried to gasp in air.

And received nothing but water.

Sam watched in horror, mechanically dragging her mask and regulator back into place. She gasped in air.

As Hinnerman tried to break free he slammed against a coral shelf that rose just above the Seafire Isle Steps.

Blood from a cut he opened on the coral spewed into the water, and the man went limp.

Sam caught Adam's arm, and his eyes met hers. He was still furious, in a deadly rage. But he read in her eyes what she had realized earlier. It was time for the killing to stop.

She hadn't spoken, but he nodded. He took a long draft of her air, then indicated that she should take her mouthpiece back and surface. She did, with him behind her, dragging Hinnerman's wounded form.

Sam broke the surface first. Jem was holding on to the ladder on the back of the dive boat.

“Sam?” he demanded.

“Adam's coming. Hinnerman's hurt,” she said.

Jem nodded, dragging himself up the ladder to help Sam emerge first, then turning back for Adam. Sam sat at the back of the boat, doffing her flippers first, thanking James Jay Astin as he helped her out of her vest.

Adam reached the ladder. Liam Hinnerman must have really gashed himself, she thought, and the sky, crimson itself with the rising of the sun, was adding to the deep red tone of the water that surrounded Hinnerman.

“Come on, Hinnerman, we're going to take you to a hospital so you can be nice and healthy when you stand trial for murder,” Adam muttered, setting Hinnerman's arms on the ladder. “Hold on!” he said, grasping the ladder to drag himself up so he could turn with Jem to heft the man out of the water.

But even as Adam emerged, Jerry suddenly started to scream. Sam jerked her head up. Adam swung around.

Hinnerman let out a startled cry as he was jerked off the ladder.

“What the hell—” Adam began.

“Shark!” Jerry whispered, standing there, shaking.

Hinnerman disappeared beneath the surface as Adam positioned himself to dive in.

James Jay Astin made a dive for Adam instead.

“It's the blood, O'Connor. You can't help him now.”

They were all frozen, stunned.

Hinnerman's head appeared above the surface one more time as he gurgled something unintelligible.

Then he disappeared under the waves that were growing fiercer with each passing second.

They heard a strange wailing. Sukee, starting to cry. Sam didn't think she was crying for Hinnerman, just for the loss of what she thought should have been hers.

Adam moistened dry lips, slipped an arm around Sam and spoke to Jem. “We've got to get back before the storm hits, Jem.”

Jem nodded. “Yeah.”

Adam led Sam to a wooden seat, his arm around her. They passed Jerry, who was sitting with her wind-whipped blond head bowed.

Sam paused and knelt beside her.

“I'm not sorry to have a mother,” she said softly.

Jerry started to cry. Sam winced, but James Jay Astin smiled wryly at her and Adam, taking a fatherly position beside Jerry.

Sue had tied Sukee to the ice chest with her belt. Joey was lying on the floor, with Yancy packing towels against his wound.

“Yancy?” Adam said.

“He's going to make it. If we all survive the storm, that is.”

Sam looked at Adam, who smiled, touched her chin and kissed her gently.

“We'll survive the storm,” he assured her. “We will.”

They took a seat side by side, Sam leaning against his shoulder.

“There's probably still a lot to explain,” Adam said softly to her. “But I meant what I said, Sam. I love you.”

She smiled. “I love you, too.”

“Want to marry me before you get mad and walk off again?”

She looked at him. Nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, marriage sounds kind of good right now.”

“I'm glad. I don't think I could leave you now for a while.”

“I don't think you'll need to leave me,” she whispered.

He kissed her again. Her lips. Softly. Tenderly.

They made a good team, she thought. “You're definitely one good dive buddy,” she told him.

He laughed.

The sound was carried away on the wind.

And Jem brought them speeding to the dock at Seafire Isle just before the heavens burst open.

D
ead men tell no tales.

But those on the
Beldona
had done so, each man crying out his own story in poignant silence.

It was the second day Adam had dived to the wreck. Though Sam had led him there the first time, she had stayed outside the crusted hull of the ship.

While the storm raged around them the other night, she had told him what she was certain her father had known. Their group—plus Hank and minus Liam Hinnerman—had huddled in the main house while the storm winds whipped around them. Sukee had ranted and threatened, promising that she was going to bring Sam up on charges of assault and battery. Joey Emerson née Shapiro had told Sam that she should tell the authorities everything she saw fit, but Sue had cried and pleaded, promising that she would get her husband psychiatric help. Sam was still a soft touch. Joey Emerson was probably not going to pay for the way he had behaved. However, even Adam had to admit that he was extremely contrite.

It also seemed as if his wife meant to make him pay dearly anyway.

So, except for Sukee, their group seemed to be a comfortable enough one while they listened to the winds rage beyond the walls of the house. And while the winds tore around them and the lights went out and they sat huddled together in darkness, Sam told them what she thought her father must have discovered.

“A ghost story, I think—it's absolutely all I can figure out. I was thinking about Adam and nearly drowning when it occurred to me.”

“Me and drowning—in the same light?”

She smiled. “Well, I especially wanted to live—because of you. And I was thinking about the things that people did for love—and for money. My dad had hinted about his theory, but I guess I really never listened. I think that Theresa-Maria Rodriguez was still very much in love with Captain Reynolds when he seized the
Yolanda
and took her and Don Carlos aboard the
Beldona.
Don Carlos had stolen the Eyes of Fire rubies for her, and she knew it. She wanted the rubies,
and
she wanted to be with Captain Reynolds. I think the two of them planned to sabotage the ship, murder everyone aboard and blow it up, then disappear together with the gems. There were dozens of places they could have gone in the New World and lived like a king and queen on the price they could have gotten for the rubies.”

“I don't understand,” Judy Walker said. “What difference would it make who or what destroyed the ship? It would still be sunken, right?”

“Sunken, but in pieces,” Sam said. “Hunks of debris covered by the coral cliff where the Steps are, just before the drop-off. Beneath the Steps, I imagine that coral and barnacles and all sorts of sea life have grown over what remains of the hull and decking, making it almost impossible to see.”

“I had gone out, figuring she was in pieces,” Hank said. “I thought she had to be under the Steps, as well. That drop-off would have been a perfect place for a ship to sink and disappear.”

“Sam is right,” Jerry offered painfully. She looked at Sam. “You're right—I'm certain.”

“But the rubies are supposedly still on the ship,” Jim Santino said. “Jerry, you saw them, right?”

She nodded. “In the eye sockets of a skeleton.”

“The rubies are still on the ship because Don Carlos Esperanza, and maybe even Captain Reynolds' own shipmates, discovered what he was up to. They probably mutinied with their Spanish prisoners, but too late to save themselves from the explosives Reynolds had set to destroy the ship,” Sam said.

“So…” Judy Walker encouraged.

“So when he knew he was about to die, I imagine Don Carlos Esperanza took out his sword and pinned Captain Reynolds right through the heart with it. He probably stuffed the rubies right into the man's eyes then and there—and Sukee's dad must have put them back when he knew he was dying himself.”

Sam paused, looking at Adam.

“I think maybe Hank and I should go down alone first. You and Jerry could dive with us to find the ship, but I don't think you should go in at first.” He hesitated a little painfully. “I don't think either of you should find Justin Carlyle.”

Sam had agreed.

So when the storm had cleared and the police had come from the mainland, they had gone out for the first time. Adam and Hank had found their way through the holes in the coral shelf until they were under the overhang. But even once they were there, it was still almost impossible to find the wreckage of the ship. They had almost used up their air when they found what had been the captain's cabin.

Adam and Hank had very carefully removed the remains of Justin Carlyle, then Chico Garcia. They decided not to move anything else at all until Sam had a chance to see the ship.

And now Sam was with him.

Seeing the ghosts of the past she had re-created in those strange moments when she had been afraid she was going to die herself.

Dead men…

Their skeletal remains lay about eerily, some held together by remnants of rusted armor, one with its head uncannily perched on a bookcase while the disjointed body sat on the desk beneath it.

Don Carlos Esperanza.

The sword that had brought about his death lay at his side. The sword that had once pierced him, through flesh and sinew and organ, a sword that had once been bathed in blood.

The sword with which he had slain Reynolds, then himself, with the sure knowledge of his impending death from the explosion he could not stop.

Now the sword lay on the handsomely carved desk where the pieces of the dead man remained, side by side with the small bones of what had been his hand.

It looked as if Don Carlos might, at any minute, pick up the sword and avenge himself upon his enemies.

Dead men did tell tales….

This one shouted silently of his own murder.

A tiny yellow tang darted in and out of the cavernous eye sockets of the long dead man.

Sea fans wafted over oak. Anemones rose against the rotted core of an inkwell.

Another skeleton lay by the side of the desk, shadowed in darkness. Though time and pressure had blown out the master's cabin window of the
Beldona,
the ship was down deep enough that the sun's rays offered little light inside.

This skeleton looked at them.

Stared at them like a demon, a devil, dead hand drifting, fingers seeming to point….

Stared at them with blazing red eyes that seemed to dazzle and blind.

Captain Reynolds.

Seeing now through the Eyes of Fire….

Captain Reynolds! A man who had received his just punishment for the murder of so many innocents. A finger lifted now, drifting in the remnant of a glove, seeming to point, just as he seemed to stare and scream….

Sam didn't touch the jewels. Adam hadn't thought she would. Sam had found the ship because of them, and Jerry probably could have done the same, yet neither woman wanted anything to do with the treasure.

Adam was glad, however, that Sam seemed intrigued by the wreck itself. They explored it, then slowly and carefully surfaced together, their information intact to hand over to James Jay Astin, who would arrange salvage with the state of Florida.

According to the salvage laws, Sam had earned her share of the treasure. She wanted it donated to a children's hospital. Some good, she had told Adam, should come from the loss of her father.

Back on the
Sloop Bee,
Adam held her, ruffled her damp hair and told her, “It's a rare woman who wouldn't even touch those rubies!”

Sam shuddered. “They're cursed.”

“Sam! You're not superstitious.”

She said nothing, and he shrugged, holding her close.

“I have a jewel I'm hoping you
will
like. It's nowhere near as grand as those rubies, but then, I've been working for myself lately, and I don't pay well at all.” He drew a ring from the little pocket of his bathing trunks. “It's an engagement ring, even though I'm hoping we can just fly away and get married.”

She offered him her finger. He slipped the ring on it. “Well?” he asked a little nervously.

“Now, this,” she said, “is the most beautiful jewel I've seen in all my life.”

He kissed her lips, then her forehead, her eyelids. She gazed at him, content. “Now those,” he said, staring intently at her and pointing, “are the wildest Eyes of Fire I've ever seen. When you're mad, Sam…”

She tapped him on the chin. “You've got a temper yourself, you know.” She smiled. “But I love you. And I think as soon as we can take a trip to the mainland, we should get married. Quite frankly, I'm afraid to wait too long.”

He grinned, then sobered. “Sam, quite seriously, the ship cost you your father. But it gave us back to one another, and, well, there's Jerry….”

“My mother.” She smiled. “How strange. I was stunned. I thought I might hate her, but I don't. She never had the kind of love I had, and she didn't know how to accept it from my father. She almost had it back again—then lost everything. You don't think she'll go to jail, do you?”

Adam shook his head. “To all intents and purposes, she killed in self-defense. She'll be fine. Mr. James Jay Astin is determined to get her the very best lawyers there are. She's been allowed to stay on the island. Things will work out.”

Sam nodded. “We can actually thank the
Beldona
for more.”

“What?”

“Well, Hank coming here. Creating Brian along with Yancy. Yancy is determined to marry him right away, too, you know. She says she was an idiot, that she lived in hell when she thought he was dead, and she wasn't letting any fool prejudice—including her own fear—keep them apart anymore.”

“I'm glad. My brother really adores her.”

“We've also got Mr. James Jay Astin.”

“How so?”

“I think he's in love with—with my mother.”

“Really?”

Sam nodded.

“And you're happy?”

“Very happy.”

He rose, pulling her up beside him. Jem was bringing the
Sloop Bee
to the dock.

Sam pointed. “Our island,” she murmured. “I mean, you are…”

“Working for a private concern now,” he assured her. “And you, my love, are definitely my greatest private concern.”

Sam laughed and landed happily in his arms. He kissed her deeply.

They were home.

And if the Eyes of Fire had offered up a curse, it was over now.

For the Eyes had closed.

And love had set them free.