Darkness(13)

Picturing herself as the frog, Gina shivered.

Then her chin came up. She’d be damned if she was going to sit there quivering in fear of him.

“And your name is . . . ?” she prompted.

When he didn’t answer, Gina’s lips compressed. She flicked a wary glance back at him. Focused ahead of the boat, his eyes were obsidian slits in a face that was ashen now except for the blue tinge of his mouth, which was grim. His jaw was hard. The wind had dried his hair, which was seal black and cut so short that she wondered if he could be military. She didn’t find the thought reassuring. His shirt was still so wet it clung to him. Through it, she could see exactly how heavily muscled his shoulders and chest were. Despite his clothes, which appeared to be the tattered remains of an expensive suit, the man was definitely not a desk jockey. The lower half of the left side of his shirt was now dark with blood. If he was bleeding like that despite how chilled his body had to be, then it was a serious injury. She marveled that he was still able to function. He had to be operating on pure adrenaline.

To have survived the crash, to say nothing of his immersion in the icy sea, and still be moving and functional, he had to be a fricking machine.



HIS GAZE shifted. Abruptly she found herself looking into his eyes. Even with him on his knees behind her they were higher than hers, which unhappily reminded her of just how big he really was. There was not a trace of softness or compassion in them, or really anywhere in his harshly carved face.

Pulling her gaze away, Gina worked on maintaining an outward facade of calm as she looked unseeingly toward the beach.

“The storm’s getting close,” he said. The tickle of his breath against her cheek made her tense up. Despite his good looks, she hated having him so near. “We’ll be lucky to make it in.”

On that they were in full agreement. Whatever else was going on with them, they were of necessity allied against the storm. For now, it was the common enemy, chasing them across the water like a ravenous gray beast, obliterating sea and sky as it devoured everything in its path. Gina’s heart pounded as she realized that it was gaining on them with alarming speed. Ahead of it, all around where the Zodiac was shooting toward the bay and beyond, the day was darkening as if dusk were falling, although it wasn’t yet four p.m. and there should have been at least an hour and a half of daylight left. The waves were starting to rival skyscrapers in size, and the wind was approaching gale force. As long as they were able to stay a reasonable distance out in front of it, they were actually benefiting from the strength of the blow because it was taking them in faster. Pushed toward land, the boat skimmed the water at what felt like warp speed, touching down with a jolt and then bouncing up again, over and over and over, Gina’s butt smacking the seat with each bump. If she’d been trying to do anything except go straight in, the little craft would have been impossible to control.

He asked, “Anybody going to be waiting for you up there on the beach?”

She hated admitting it. “No.”

“So you’re out here all alone.”

Something in his tone gave her pause. She didn’t answer.

“Are you alone?”

The menace was back in his voice. Gina barely repressed a shiver. “Yes.”

By that time they’d almost reached the mouth of the bay fronting the beach that was her target. The water before them wasn’t quite as rough as the waves they were riding, although tall whitecaps rolled angrily toward shore, and near the beach the surf was white with foam. As they flew past, the giant waves they were leaving behind broke over a trio of building-size rocks that served as a breakwater, booming as they showered the boat with a fine mist of icy spray.

Gina barely felt the droplets hit. She had both hands clamped around the wheel as she piloted the boat through the rocks. All her focus had to be on keeping the boat on course as she pointed it directly toward the smoothest section of beach.

Given the turbulence and what was certain to be the concurrent state of the undertow, to say nothing of the temperature of the water, she wasn’t even going to try to bring the Zodiac in in the usual way, which, absent a dock, involved stopping a few yards from shore, hopping out, and pulling the boat through the surf to land.

“Hold on,” she threw at him over her shoulder. “I’m going to beach it.”

He didn’t say anything. Instead he gripped the seat hard with both hands, one on either side of her, which she took as an acknowledgment of her words. He was so close behind her now that he was practically breathing down her neck, boxing her in with hard arms and the solid wall of his chest, but there was nothing she could do to get away from him at this point, and, anyway, she couldn’t worry about him at the moment. Bringing the boat in had to be her only concern.

Steering as best she could given the buffeting the boat was taking from the wind and waves, she sent the boat racing toward the beach. At the last possible minute she shifted into neutral and threw the lever that lifted the motor clear of the water. Clenching her teeth, hands clamped around the wheel, she prepared herself for a hard impact as the force of the huge wave they were riding carried them the rest of the way in.

Gina let out an involuntary cry as they hit land with a grinding jolt that threw her forward, slamming her painfully into the wheel, driving the binoculars that still hung around her neck into her breastbone. The stranger crashed into her, heavy as a sack of cement, his chest colliding with her back with the approximate force of a giant sledgehammer. Gasping as the air was driven from her lungs, Gina could only lie helplessly against the wheel with him draped on top of her as the boat scraped over the beach, slewed violently sideways, and then finally shuddered to a halt maybe six feet or so beyond the reach of the surf.