“Here we go,” Rick said as he pushed the gear lever forward. Relief flooded him as the Sorcière des Mers eased into motion. “Homeward bound.”
They’d wrapped Keith in the tent and hauled him over the rim and down to the beach. Rick had rowed the three of them in the inflatable out to the Sorcière where he immediately replaced the fuel pump fuse and tried the engine. To his unbounded relief, it started right up.
As the engine warmed up, they’d placed Keith belowdecks and raised the anchor.
And now they stood side-by-side on the bridge.
Laura looked about to cry. “We survived. Somehow we survived.”
Yeah, he thought, thinking of Keith’s trussed-up body. But Keith didn’t.
Which meant he’d failed in what he’d set out to do. But at least Laura hadn’t been hurt.
He hugged her close. “We’re going home, Laura.”
“I can’t believe what we went through in the last forty-eight hours,” she said, her face against his chest. “The madness, the violence, the deaths, the … the revelations.”
Rick glanced back at the island. A cool front was moving through, creating a mist.
“Look!” she said, pointing up to the rim.
A host of dapis lined the edge, watching them.
She waved.
Rick smiled. “What are you doing?”
“Just saying good-bye … and maybe good riddance.”
One or two of them raised a tentative hand, so she waved again. A few more waved back. She waved a third time and a lot more copied her. The gesture seemed to catch on. Eventually all the dapis were waving good-bye.
“My God, they learn fast,” she said.
Rick nodded. “As we know all too well.”
The mist thickened as they pulled away. Soon the dapis and eventually their island were lost from sight.
“Do you think Keith was right?” she said. “I mean, the effect the truth about them would have on the world?”
Rick shrugged. “Who can say? I have a hard time buying it, but he was so sure. So it doesn’t matter if he was right or wrong, he was convinced the secret of the dapis would usher in a new Dark Ages and he was saving human civilization. No way we were gonna talk him out of it.”
“Idée fixe,” she said.
“Hmmm?”
“A medical term for a mind-set or opinion that’s set in stone, impervious to reason.”
“Well, with no Dark Age coming, I guess we’ve helped achieve Keith’s purpose. Which means, if the Intrusive Cosmic Entities who created the ikhar to screw with our heads also created the dapis for the same purpose, then we’ve been a part of wrecking both schemes. The world doesn’t know the panacea is real, and no one but us knows the dapis exist.”
He tilted his head back and thumbed his nose at the sky. This is for you out there … just for you.
“I just had an odd thought,” she said. “What if there’s disagreement among the intellects? One side tries to get a dapi into the hands of someone who can expose the secret, and the other side makes sure it’s a man who understands the consequences and won’t let the secret out?”
“You mean, it’s like a cosmic game?”
“Yes, and you and I are caught in the middle.” She pressed her face into his back. “Listen to me! I sound like you!”
He couldn’t help grinning. Was it contagious? Had she caught it?
“I like it, I like it!”
“That’s what worries me!”
He laughed. It felt good to laugh. Back there on the island he’d thought he might never laugh again.
The red, sinking sun peeked through a break in the clouds dead ahead.
She hugged him tighter. “I love this.”
“Did you just say the ‘L’ word?”
They’d agreed it couldn’t be love yet. Was she feeling otherwise?
“Wasn’t that a TV show about lesbians?”
“Not that I know of. No…”
She said, “I mean just you and me on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Isn’t it great?”
A sigh slipped out. “It’s super.”
She hugged him tighter. “Hey-hey-hey. You could show a little more enthusiasm.”
“No, it’s a wonderful thing. Wonderful for me, but…”
“But what?”
“Well, you can do better.”
“Stop that!”
“Really. A guy without a ton of blood on his hands.”
“Well, from what you told me, the world’s a better place because of that blood.”
“Some of it was innocent.”
“That’s not the point,” she said.
“What is the point?”
“That I’ll decide who’s good for me.” She snaked her arms around him again. “Rick, Rick, Rick. Is there any hope for us?”
He cupped a hand over hers. “There’s always hope. I need you to keep me a little sane and you need me to keep you a little crazy. And I need…”
“Need what? Anything.”
He was going to have to come clean with her. Now or never. She deserved to know everything.
“It’s about Düsseldorf.”
“Not that again. That’s over and done.”
“I need to tell you the rest of the story.”
“There’s more?”
He nodded as his stomach knotted. He took a deep breath. “I knew the barn with the kids was rigged to explode. I knew that if I set off the sickos’ explosives that the kids would go too.”
Her arms around his chest loosened. “You knew the kids would die?”
“I wasn’t right in the head, Laura. I’d seen the kids … no eyes … no tongues … deaf … paralyzed. They weren’t coming back from what the sickos had done to them. They had these looks of unrelenting horror on their faces as they tried to scream and scream but they had no voices and I … I decided they were better off dead.”
Her grip slackened further. “You decided…”
“Yeah.” He wanted to turn and face her but couldn’t. “I know I had no right. But all they had ahead of them was endless, unremitting horror.”
She released him and now he turned to face her. She was staring at him, arms at her side, expression unreadable.
“And no one knows?”
“You’re the first, the only. I expected to take it to my grave. Then you came along.”
“And you’ve lived with that all these years?”
“I keep telling myself I didn’t do it to them, I did it for them.”
“Does it work?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“How many children?”
“Fifteen.”
She gasped. “Then … at least one or two of them had to have been Marissa’s age.”
He said nothing. He couldn’t.
“Why did you tell me this?” Her voice sounded on the verge of tears.
“I felt you should know … if we’re headed toward something … toward being together, you have a right to know.”
“You and your damn duty!” she said, voice rising, tears filling her eyes. She pounded both fists against his chest. Not terribly hard. Strength seemed to have deserted her. “Did you ever think I might not want to know something like that?” She began pounding him with every word. “Did—you—ever—think?”
He pulled her against him. She didn’t struggle, but she didn’t embrace him either. Simply leaned against him.
“Believe me, Laura, I didn’t want to tell you at all, but I couldn’t live with … not.”
They stood statue-still for a while, then she pushed back.
“I have to think,” she said turning away.
“Laura…”
“I have to think.”
She left the bridge. He watched her make her way down to the aft deck where she sat on the transom and stared out at the water.
Now you’ve done it, he thought.
His chest felt heavy—everything felt heavy. Chances were excellent he’d just ruined the best thing that had ever happened to him. Should have kept his goddamn mouth shut. But that would be living a lie. He’d proved an expert at that during his years with the Company, but he refused to with the woman he loved. Sooner or later it would have come out, and the longer he waited, the worse it would be.
I have to think …
Would she ever forgive him? Could she? He’d yet to forgive himself, so how could she?