Envy(141)

“Shut up!”

Todd rounded on her and struck a blow that caught her at waist level. Favoring her bleeding foot, she was already off balance. His blow sent her reeling backward. The chrome side railing caught her in the back of her knees. Arms windmilling, she went overboard with a scream that died as soon as she hit the water.

Roark stared at the empty space she’d left at the boat’s railing and sobered instantly. “She’s too drunk to swim!”

He executed a shallow dive into the water. The salt water seared the open wounds on his face and he came up gasping. He was fighting nausea from too much liquor and what he knew must be a concussion where he’d been hit with the bottle.

But all this hardly registered. Treading water, he blinked his eyes as clear as he could get them and frantically searched the surface of the dark water for a sign of Mary Catherine.

“Do you see her?” he yelled up at Todd, who was standing on the deck looking down at him, blood dripping from his chin onto his smooth chest. “Todd? Christ, did you hear me? Do you see her?”

“No.”

“Turn on the lights.”

Todd just stood there staring into the water, apparently shocked into immobility.

“Shit.”

Heart pounding, head bursting, Roark jackknifed beneath the surface. Although it stung like crazy, he kept his eyes open. But it didn’t matter. He might just as well have been swimming through a bottle of ink. He couldn’t even see his own hands as he waved them about, searching blindly, hoping to make contact with a limb, skin, hair.

He stayed under until he couldn’t stand the burning in his lungs an instant longer. Breaking the surface, he took a huge gulp of air. He was surprised to see how far he had swum away from the boat. At least Todd had shaken off his stupor and turned on the underwater lights. They cast an eerie green glow around the craft, but they didn’t penetrate nearly far enough.

Although his arms and legs felt like lead and his brain seemed to have relinquished control of them, Roark began swimming toward the boat. Todd was doing something on the port side. Hope surged inside Roark’s chest. He shouted, “Did you find her? Is she over there?”

Todd returned to the starboard side. “No luck?”

Luck? This wasn’t a fishing trip. What was the matter with him? “Call the Coast Guard. I can’t find her. Oh, Jesus.” He sobbed when the full impact of the situation hit him. She might be dead already. Mary Catherine—Sheila—might have drowned because of his inability to save her.

“Call the Coast Guard,” he repeated before diving beneath the surface again.

Knowing it was futile, he pushed himself through the seawater, eyes open but seeing nothing, hands groping but feeling nothing. Still, he was unwilling to give up. If there was the slimmest chance that she was hanging on, clinging to life, desperate for help…

Again and again he went down, coming up only long enough to take a breath before going down again, diving so deep it made his ears hurt.

He struggled to the surface one last time, fearing that he wouldn’t make it, afraid that he had made one foray too many. At last he tasted air. Greedily he sucked it into his lungs. He couldn’t survive another submersion. He was too tired even to swim the distance between him and the boat. Weakly he treaded water, barely able to keep himself afloat.

“Todd,” he called hoarsely. “Todd.”

Todd appeared at the rail. Roark’s eyes had been scoured by the salt water. His vision was cloudy. “I can’t find her. I can’t look anymore. Throw me the preserver.”

Todd left to get the preserver, and Roark wondered vaguely why he hadn’t had it ready.

Exhausted, he longed to close his burning eyes but was afraid that if he did he would slip beneath the surface and drown before he could garner the energy to save himself. But his eyes must have closed on their own. He must have been only a heartbeat away from losing consciousness, because he was startled awake when the boat’s motor roared to life.

Todd shouldn’t be starting the motor. He should be throwing him a life preserver. If the Coast Guard had been given the coordinates of their location, they should stay in that spot until help arrived. It was damn stupid to start up an outboard with Mary Catherine and him in the water this close to the boat.

These thoughts flashed through his mind in a nanosecond, not in individual words, but as fully formed and intact conclusions. “Todd, what are you doing?”

He kicked his legs and feebly moved his arms in a parody of swim strokes, but it was like trying to push Jell-O through quicksand. But there was no need to try and swim after all. Look. Todd was bringing the boat to him.

Only thing, he was running it too hot and too fast for safety.

“Hey!”

It was a nightmare’s yell, when you open your mouth and try to scream but you can’t utter a sound and that intensifies the horror of the nightmare. He tried to wave his arms, but they weighed a thousand pounds apiece. He couldn’t even lift them out of the water.

“Todd,” he croaked. “Turn to port! I’m here! Can’t you see me?”

He could see him. He was looking straight at him through the plastic windshield that protected the cockpit. Control panel lights were making a Halloween mask of his bruised and swelling face. His eyes glowed red. Torches of hell.

Roark screamed one last time before fear sent him plunging beneath the surface. In seconds he was engulfed in churning, strangling waters. Then the terror gripped him. Undiluted terror. The kind that few men ever have the misfortune of experiencing. Terror so absolute that death seems a blessing.