Uncharted (29 page)

Not exactly the reaction she’d hoped for.

She released a laugh that sounded far too nervous. “Don’t worry, Kev, I’m not about to throw myself at you or make a scene. But since we’re together and this is a life-or-death situation—”

“Nobody’s going to die. We’re going to make it out of here.”

She drew a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Okay, have it your way. But if we don’t, I don’t want to die without letting you know how I feel. I think I’ve loved you since college, but I couldn’t say anything because you were always with Karyn.”

“Lisa—”

“Let me finish, please.” She held up her hand but avoided looking at him, afraid she’d see pity in his eyes. “I don’t expect anything from you; I don’t want to be a bother. But if—when—we get home, I want you to know I’d love to hear from you. If you have the time. If you want to call.”

She lowered her arm as heat stole into her cheeks.

“Can I speak now?”

She lifted her gaze and was relieved to see a smile on his face. “Sure.”

He studied the rock in his hand, then tossed it from palm to palm. “I think you’re great, Lisa. I always have.”

She pressed her lips together, knowing a
but
was coming. “You don’t have to say anything else.”

“But I want to.”

She shivered as hope curled into her heart. “Go ahead.”

He sighed and lowered the rock. “I’d love to see you, but this isn’t a good time or place to think about that. Karyn would . . . well, she wouldn’t understand.”

“Aren’t things over between you two?”

“Our marriage has been over for a long time. But we have a history, and we have a daughter. Nothing will ever change those things. You and I have always been great friends, and I’d hate to risk that relationship, though I’d love to get to know you apart from the group. I do have a lot of demands on my time, a lot of pressing business problems, but if you want to spend a weekend together, sure, we could do that. You could come to Atlanta, or I could fly to Seattle. We’d have a great time.”

Lisa squinted at him, searching for the rock of truth in the sea of words. She had the feeling she’d just been handed a ticket for one glorious weekend . . . but nothing more.

He’d thrown a cracker to a starving woman.

Rigidly holding her disappointment in check, she jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Okay. Well, I’m going for a walk, if anyone needs me.”

Apparently Kevin didn’t, for he seemed relieved to turn his attention back to the bumper.

Crumpled, crusted with sand, and feeling fit for nothing but a hot bath, Karyn stumbled out of the cave and stared at a bleak landscape that hadn’t changed much since she last looked at it—the shadows hadn’t moved, the somber clouds hadn’t parted, the heat hadn’t abated. The tide, however, had brought in more debris, including patches of black tar and gray-green seaweed, but the new additions had done nothing to improve the view.

She was so tired her nerves throbbed, but apparently she wasn’t the only one who had given up on sleep. The others had deserted the cavern while she tried to rest, so she figured they must be searching for provisions among the dump sites.

She pressed her hand to her forehead, struggling to remember what John had told them about the Marshall Islands. Some of the atolls were used by the U.S. military . . . for what, target practice? This place was a likely candidate for that. She couldn’t imagine a more forlorn setting.

She gritted her teeth, steeling herself to the agony of movement as she stepped over the sand. She crept forward, her eyes watering with the effort, and was surprised when a sob escaped her lips. She wasn’t the type to cry in a catastrophe. She had saved many a production from failure and rescued many an actor who forgot his lines—

She stopped as a familiar bit of paper caught her eye. Lying on the dark sand ahead was the playbill from the play she’d performed during her break last summer. She had played Estelle, the pneumonia victim married to a man three times her age.

How in the world?

Their luggage must have busted open and some of the contents been scattered. But she hadn’t packed a playbill in her suitcase. And none of the others would have been anywhere near New York. None of them would have had any reason to see the play . . . except Kevin.

She took a deep breath as a dozen different emotions collided. Had he come to see her? He hadn’t mentioned it or stopped backstage after the performance. But here was the playbill, so he must have seen the show. It must have meant something to him. Why else would he pack this souvenir?

She picked up the wet booklet and turned a sodden page to see her picture beside those of her fellow thespians, Ashley Barnes and Landon Smith. The three-role play had been a small production running only three weekends. The theater barely sat fifty, so if Kevin had come, she
should
have seen him—

But maybe not. Last summer her head had been full of her lines, her role, and Landon Smith. In the drama her character flirted shamelessly with Landon’s character, so it felt perfectly natural to allow herself to become infatuated with Landon for the run of the play.

Maybe that’s why she hadn’t seen Kevin. And that’s probably why Sarah, who would have known her father was coming, hadn’t said a word. That’s why Karyn had missed whatever signs she should have noticed.

A dark memory suddenly surfaced and stole her breath. Kevin . . . had found her in the boat’s cabin. Faced with the threat of death, he had come for her . . . and somehow he had pulled her out of that confining space.

She’d been so blind. She should have known Kevin still cared about her, not only because she was the mother of his child, but because she was his first love.

Choking on fresh tears, she buttoned the playbill into her blouse and walked to one of the dump sites, pausing at one spot where dozens of books had been piled in a heap. Many had been waterlogged and ruined, but others were bone dry. She looked around, half-expecting to see a crate or a storage container hidden in the rattling palmettos behind her. Where
had
these things come from?

Finding no answer, she gathered books by the handful and stuffed them into a burlap bag she found half-buried in the sand. After pushing her bangs out of her eyes, she tightened the bag’s drawstring and hooked it over her shoulder, then dragged her load to where Mark and Kevin were crouching by the trench in the sand. Mark was talking, his hands stirring the air, while Kevin kept shaking his head.

“Hi.” Her gaze lingered on Kevin as she cut into the conversation. “How’s the signal fire coming?”

Mark’s upper lip curled. “We need a piece of convex glass—like the lens from a pair of binoculars or a camera. Kevin’s brought me glass, but it won’t work.”

Kevin held up his palm, where a bright red line ran from the inner edge of his thumb to his wrist. “I nearly sliced off my thumb getting these pieces for him. Had to break the glass out of an old picture frame.”

“Plain glass is useless,” Mark snapped. “The surface has to be curved. I need convex glass, or maybe a piece of steel and flint. I could start a fire with either of those.”

Karyn lifted a brow. “Maybe I could pick up a book of matches at the restaurant on the corner.”

Mark glared at her. “Sarcasm isn’t going to help.”

Kevin raked his hand through his hair, then looked at the burlap bag. “Did you find anything useful?”

She pulled out two paperbacks. “These are perfectly dry. They ought to burn.”

Kevin examined the cover of the first book. “
Animal Farm
. I had to read that in high school.”

“I think we all had to read it.” She tossed a copy of
1984
at his feet. “That one’s a classic too. I almost hate to burn them.”

Mark’s eyes narrowed. “Where’d you find the bag?”

“This?” She nudged the sand-encrusted burlap with her foot. “It was almost completely buried, but I saw the string. Thought it’d come in handy.”

Mark reached for the bag, lifted it up, then turned it around. The thin line of his mouth clamped tight as he read the painted label. “A sack-race bag.” He frowned at Karyn. “You just happened to find that?”

She blinked. “Yeah. What’s the big deal?”

“Nothing.” Mark dropped the bag onto the sand and looked away.

“Something wrong, Mark?”

“You should be out there searching for glass.”

Karyn looked at Kevin, wondering if he had an explanation for Mark’s odd behavior, but he was tying a strip of cloth around the cut on his hand.

She blew out a breath and knelt to empty her bag of books. “Either of you formulate any ideas about where all this stuff came from? I mean, some of it’s trash, but some of it’s not. Who throws books out with the garbage?”

“People who don’t like to read,” Kevin said.

Mark snorted, but Kevin opened
Animal Farm
and flipped through the pages. “Maybe it was a plane crash.”

“I don’t think so.” Mark pointed to the chrome bumper. “I’m in the car business, and we never ship antique cars by jetliner.”

“But people ship all kinds of things by boat,” Kevin said, absently flipping through the paperback. “Maybe we’re seeing the contents of a storage container that fell off some ship and washed up here. Anything’s possible.”

“That might explain some of the clothes,” Karyn said. “After a good spin in a washer, some of them would look new—” She halted in midsentence when she recognized the book in her hand. “I don’t believe it. It’s
Happily Ever After
.”

“Hmm?” Kevin murmured, still immersed in
Animal Farm
.

“John’s book. Listen.” She sank down and crossed her legs, then flipped to the first page. ‘‘In a kingdom far away, a mighty king looked over his empty realm and invited his people to live among his lands and plant his fields. The first to respond were warriors who cared more for games and pleasure and fighting than obeying their benevolent master . . .”

Kevin looked up, his face squinched into a question mark. “What’d John do, rip off King Arthur?”

Karyn gaped at him as understanding dawned. “You never read it, did you? How could you sell a book you never read?”

“Hey, I could sell caskets without spending the night in one.”

A flash of humor crossed Mark’s blocky face. “Good line. I’ll have to remember that one.”

“It’s a great story.” Karyn pressed the open book to her chest. “I haven’t read it in ages, but it was about this king and all the different kinds of people who came to live in his kingdom. I forget what happens, but at the end I remember a big scene with feasting and music and laughter—”

“Karyn.” Mark spoke her name with a restrained ferocity that made it clear he’d reached the end of his patience. “We don’t have time for a trip down memory lane. Would you please drop that book and do something useful?”

She looked to Kevin, wondering if he’d take up for her, but he only grinned and tossed
Animal Farm
onto the pile of paperbacks. When Mark stomped away, heading across the beach, she reached across the space between them and squeezed Kevin’s arm. “I found the playbill.”

“What?”

She pulled the battered booklet from her blouse. “The playbill from last summer. I found it on the beach.”

Confusion crept into his expression. “So . . . what are you saying? That finding it was a stroke of luck?”

She smiled and leaned against him. “I was thinking it’s not like you to pack a souvenir. I’ve never known you to be sentimental.”

A faint line appeared between his brows. “Karyn . . . I didn’t pack anything like that.”

“Come on, Kev, there’s no need to pretend. Who else could have packed it?”

He examined her face with considerable absorption. “Maybe Sarah?”

Karyn crossed her arms and pointedly looked away. Why was he being so stubborn? Sure, Sarah could have slipped the playbill into Karyn’s suitcase, but why would she?

No, the program had to have come from Kevin’s luggage. After all they’d been through, why would he deny it?

Sighing, she dropped the playbill onto the pile of books, then tucked John’s slender blue volume into her back pocket. “One convex lens, coming right up.”

She stood and lifted her chin as she walked down the beach. She’d probably have more luck promising him a needle from a haystack.