Uncharted (41 page)

Kevin shivered under the stiff denim shirt Karyn had tossed over his shoulders. Since they’d dragged themselves to the fire, she had been trying to restore warmth to their battered bodies. Even Susan roused from her depression long enough to build up the flames until they roared like the bonfire at an FSU pep rally.

He shook his head, amazed that he could think of such things in a moment of defeat. They would have made it if not for that fickle wind.

“I’m beginning to think,” he said, his voice rusty with swallowed seawater, “that Susan’s right. The island wants to keep us here.”

His little joke was met with silence. Before this, he realized, Mark and Lisa would have been quick to deny such an idea, but now . . .

Lisa pushed her wet bangs from her eyes. “We’ve had a streak of bad luck.” She was trying to comb her hair with her fingers and not having much success. “We’ll rest and try again.”

Mark studied the sea. “The wind shouldn’t have changed like that. It’s uncanny. It’s
crazy
. Waves have predictable patterns, but nothing makes sense here.”

“We’re in a different hemisphere,” Lisa said. “Patterns change. Maybe we’re operating under false assumptions—”

Susan lifted her veiled head. “I think this place is haunted.”

Mark snorted. “I told you, this island has been contaminated. The strange things we saw are nothing but hallucinations—”

“So you saw them too?” Kevin interrupted.

Mark hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. Like you, I went into the caverns and saw things. But they were the result of my mind interacting with whatever poisons have been unleashed here, nothing else.”

Susan hauled her veiled gaze from the fire to the circle of friends. “I saw David,” she said, “not here, but in a dream the night he died. He was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear him. He was holding the book.”

Kevin stiffened in a frisson of déjà vu. “What book?” he asked, though he knew.

Susan’s eyes went damp with pain. “John’s book. I’d know it anywhere. David kept pointing to it like he was desperate for me to understand something about it.”

Kevin looked away, unable to bear the burning light in her eyes. He’d had the same dream, seen the same thing, though he’d forgotten about it until now.

Wearing boxers and a T-shirt, Kevin Carter stood in the men’s department of Dillard’s. He moved gingerly through the aisle, his bare feet in direct contact with the gritty, cold floor. He was looking for something—a white shirt, definitely. Nothing said
executive
like a crisp dress shirt. And dark trousers, maybe something with a thin stripe. Nothing pleated; only men with bulges needed to wear pleats.

A bearded salesclerk approached with a white shirt and navy slacks; Kevin thanked the man and walked toward the dressing room. In the privacy of that plush cell, he discovered that his feet had managed to clothe themselves in dark socks.

The wave of the future, perhaps—automatic dressing. He laughed as he imagined a shopping experience where he could visualize whatever he wanted and it appeared on his body. He whispered a wish and a clerk handed the item to him in the perfect color and size. Consumers had learned to be comfortable with online ordering; they could adjust to automatic shopping as well.

He looked in the mirror, ran his hand over his dark hair, and smiled at his reflection. Nice to see that the hair was still brown, the face still smooth and unlined. His waistband was thirty-three inches, the same size he’d worn in college.

“Kevin . . . are you hiding from me?”

He smiled, recognizing the voice. He’d met the redhead at a bar in underground Atlanta, and he’d been tantalized when she refused to give him her phone number. The reason became apparent a moment later—she’d come to the bar with a professional football player whose head sat on his shoulders like an overripe pumpkin.

Kevin wouldn’t have pursued her, but when she left, she glanced in his direction and sent him a smile. The promise behind that smile lured him back to the bar the next six nights. Then he met her again, this time without Goliath.

Her name was Venice, she was in her late twenties, and he suspected she was as brainy as she was beautiful. He wanted to take her to dinner, but Sarah had been in town that weekend, and he didn’t want to worry about his daughter interrupting what could be a magical evening.

He opened the dressing-room door and spied Venice lingering in the hallway, one finger curving in a come-hither gesture. “Catch me,” she whispered, “if you can.”

So—she was the playful type. He allowed her to slip away, then he followed, dodging salesclerks and customers and wide tables spread with designer slacks and shirts and sweaters. When he lost sight of his quarry, he stopped and listened for her lovely laugh, then set off in pursuit again.

He’d been wandering for several minutes when he turned a corner and found the escalator. Venice’s laughter rippled toward him like flowing water. When he reached the bottom, he saw her halfway up, ascending like a queen about to survey her kingdom. “Come on.” She glanced over her shoulder as she lifted a brow. “Why are you hesitating?”

He gripped the black rubber rails and planted his feet on the stairs, letting the escalator carry him upward. She turned and glided down the serrated steps, remaining in the same space as he rose to meet her.

He looked at the silver stairs and smiled in anticipation. In a minute, she’d be only a few feet away. Maybe she’d step into his arms and they would share a kiss as they ascended to the second floor.

He looked up, delighted by the prospect, but Venice had been replaced by David Payne. Kevin’s old friend stood on the stairs with a blue book in his hand. He smiled when their gazes connected, then he pointed to the book and said something Kevin couldn’t hear.

Kevin leaned on the rails and shook his head in regret. “I hate to tell you, man, but your timing is terrible.”

David mouthed his silent message and pointed to the book.

“Listen.” Kevin straightened. “I was having a pretty good time until you came along. I know you’re probably upset because I’m not going with you on that trip, but I have a life, you know? I’ve got an ex-wife, a daughter, and a business to run. If you’ll get out of the way, I
might
have an exceptionally hot girlfriend—”

The gentle hum of the escalator shifted into an ear-splitting, scraping clatter. Kevin lurched forward, gripping the rubber rails as the mechanical stairs ground to a halt, then shifted beneath his feet. The lower half of the stairs changed direction and moved downward while David’s half of the loop began to rise.

“This can’t be.” Kevin stared at the breach where the machine’s intersecting teeth were splitting and separating. “This doesn’t make sense.”

He glanced up at his old friend, backlit now by the bright lights of the second floor. David’s mouth moved in a silent entreaty, but even if he had spoken, Kevin wouldn’t have heard a word over the metallic thump and grind of the escalator. David held up the book and continually mouthed his message while the escalator lowered Kevin to a level where the lights had dimmed and the floor had vanished under a layer of murk.

The sight of Karyn pressing her hand to her temple yanked Kevin from his reverie. “I saw David too,” she said.

Lisa nodded. “Me too.”

Kevin looked at Mark, who reluctantly met his eye. “Yeah, count me in. I saw him with that blasted book on my boat. I didn’t know what he was trying to tell me, but he seemed mighty insistent.”

Kevin shook his head. “I never read the thing. Didn’t sell that many, either.”

“I read it.” Lisa bent her knees. “It was about finding fulfillment and success through hard work for the kingdom. John wrote it after he became religious.”

Karyn exhaled softly. “I read it because I wanted to know what I was selling. I remember it being a medieval tale that ended with a big banquet scene. ”

Mark laughed. “I remember thinking John’s book made about as much sense as
Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
I always pushed the business advice—have fun at your job, invest in good equipment, and don’t be afraid to branch out—but some of what John wrote was rubbish. You don’t succeed in business by groveling in front of anybody.”

Susan released a heavy sigh. “I always thought it was a morality play—you know, obey the king or suffer the consequences.”

Lines of concentration deepened under Karyn’s eyes as she watched the crackling fire. “I think David was trying to warn us. And now it’s too late.”

Kevin grimaced in good humor. “I wish you had explained that earlier. I’d never have come on this trip.”

“I think he
knew
we’d come,” Karyn insisted. “And he knew what would happen, so he wanted us to read the book again. Maybe if we had, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Really?” Lisa underlined the question with sarcasm. “Would you rather be lying on the bottom of the sea with John? Considering the alternatives, I’m glad we made it to this island, contaminated or not. As long as there’s life, there’s hope.”

Karyn’s blush deepened her sunburn. “John would have said all life continues forever. No one ceases to exist; we merely move from one dimension to another.”

Susan rolled another rotten log into the fire pit, sending a stream of sparks into the air. “This place certainly qualifies as another dimension. I don’t think we’re hallucinating. I was watching something in one of those caves, and Karyn came up and saw it too. How could we share a figment of our imaginations?”

“The same thing happened to me and Karyn,” Kevin added. “And it was odd—it was an event we both remembered, but what we saw wasn’t what happened. It was—”

“The thing that
could
have happened.” Lisa looked at him with an intense but guarded expression. “Maybe the thing you
wanted
to happen. When I looked into the cavern, it was as if someone had read my mind and posted the results for the whole world to see.”

Mark spat onto the sand. “That’s insane. It’s impossible.”

Karyn’s hand clamped around Kevin’s wrist like an iron manacle. “It’s not impossible if—”

Mark lifted a bushy brow. “If what?”

“If we’re dead.”

Her words were met by a total ringing silence broken only by the crackle and hiss of the fire. Finally, Mark managed a weak laugh. “That’s rich. We’re
dead
?”

Karyn nodded. “Probably. We’re dead, and we’re in hell. Or purgatory. Or someplace in between. But this sure isn’t heaven.”

Lisa’s eyes flickered with unease. “What if it’s hell?”

Mark snorted. “This look like a lake of fire to you?”

“But what if hell’s not like they said—”

“Lisa.” Mark dropped his hand on her shoulder. “Stop and think, Goody Two-Shoes. You think
you
deserve hell?”

“You don’t go to hell because of what you
do
,” Lisa answered, her voice flat. “You go to hell because you reject what God has provided. Remember John’s book? The knights, the farmers, the entrepreneurs were all given a bag of seed, and they ignored it.
That’s
why the king sent them into exile.”

“Forget John’s fairy tale,” Mark said. “It was fantasy. This island is real.”

“Besides,” Kevin said, his mind racing, “we’re here; we can touch each other.”

“So?”

“So if we were dead, we’d be spirits. You can’t touch a spirit.”