“I meant to keep quiet all night,” David said irritably. “There’s nothing anyone can do until the storm passes. Then the body will be brought up, and Nigel will get to the bottom of what’s going on.”
“Maybe,” Jay said dully. “And maybe he won’t find out a damn thing and we’ll all be walking around afraid forever.”
“I don’t think so,” David said. “I’m pretty sure that whoever killed Alicia might have helped Seth Granger into the water. And that person will, eventually, give himself away. Until then, just be careful.”
“Great, David, thanks a lot,” Len said. “Now none of us is going to be able to get any sleep.”
“Why?” David said. “Hey, it’s just the six of us on the island. We stick together, nothing goes wrong,” he said flatly.
A strained silence followed his words.
“No one sleeps, that much is evident,” Len said at last.
The sound of the wind suddenly seemed to die out completely.
The eye of the storm was just about on them.
“Hell,” Hank Adamson swore. “This is ridiculous. I’m going to sleep. Alicia Farr is dead, and you found her,” he told David. “That doesn’t make any of us guilty of anything. You’re right. Tomorrow, or as soon as he can, Nigel will come out and take care of things.”
He pushed his chair away from the table. Alex kept her eyes tightly closed, not wanting any of them to know she had heard their conversation.
“We’re in the eye,” Jay said suddenly. “Len, come with me. I’m going out. Just for a minute. Just to take a quick look around.” He sounded strained.
“You shouldn’t go out, Jay,” David said.
“I have responsibilities here. I have to go out,” Jay said. “The rest of you stay here. Len will be with me. Everyone will have someone keeping an eye on them.”
“Just you and Len together?” John said.
“All right, then. Three and three. Hank, you come with us for a minute,” Jay said.
Hank groaned.
“Please. Three and three,” Jay repeated.
With a sigh, Hank rose and joined them. Jay unbolted the door, stepping out into the dim light of the world beyond the shelter. “We’ll just be a minute.”
Alex didn’t believe for a minute that he was going out to check on the damage. They kept a gun in a lock box behind the check-in counter. He was undoubtedly going for it.
“What the hell are you doing on this island?” David asked John.
“The same back to you,” John said.
Then, out of the blue, the radio went silent as the room was pitched into total blackness.
Chapter 11
The hum of the generator was gone.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
For a moment David sat in stunned silence, listening to the absolute nothing that surrounded him in the pitch darkness. Then he heard a chair scraping against the floor.
John Seymore. The man was up, and Alex was sleeping on a cot just feet away. Seymore could be going after her. Fear—maybe irrational, maybe not—seized him. He couldn’t seem to control his urge to protect Alex, no matter what.
He sprang up, hearing the scrape of his own chair against the floor. He heard movement, tried to judge the sound, then made a wild tackle, going after the man.
He connected with his target right by the row of cots. His arms around his opponent’s midsection, together they crashed downward, onto the cot where Alex had been sleeping.
Dimly, as Seymore twisted, sending a fist flying, David became aware that the cot was empty. Alex had fled. She might still be in the storm-shelter room somewhere, or she could have found the door and escaped.
Seymore’s fist connected with his right shoulder. A powerful punch. Blindly, David returned the blow. He thought he caught Seymore’s chin. The man let out a grunt of pain, then twisted to find David with another blow.
They continued fighting for several minutes with desperate urgency, until suddenly an earsplitting gunshot rocked the pitch-dark room.
Both of them went still. The shot had come from the doorway.
Instinctively, they rolled away from one another.
“Alex!” David shouted.
There was no answer.
After the explosion of sound, silence descended again. He wasn’t sure where Seymore had gone.
With a sudden burst of speed, he picked himself up and raced toward the open door. Insane or not, instinct compelled him to do so.
Alex was certain that John and David were going to tear each other apart. Damn Jay! They were supposed to stay together, watching one another, and instead he’d gone for a weapon. What the hell did he intend to do? Hold everyone at gunpoint until the authorities came? Shoot them all?
Could Jay be the killer? No! She refused to believe it. And yet… As soon as he’d left, the generator had gone off.
What the hell had happened?
She had no idea. All she knew for certain was that David and John had suddenly become mortal combatants. Did they know something she didn’t? Was one of them telling the truth—and the other not?