“Alex, no!” David shouted.
He couldn’t begin to imagine the undercurrents, the power of the water, in the wake of the storm. And he didn’t give a damn about anything other than getting her back. He even forgot that a bullet could stop him in his tracks in two seconds. He dropped the speargun and went tearing toward the water.
A dim line barely showed where water and sky met. As he plowed into the waves, he saw something shoot through the water. For a moment he thought Seymore had somehow managed to move quicker than he had and had gotten ahead of him in the violent surf.
Then he realized that whoever was ahead of him was huge, bigger than a man. David plowed on, fighting the waves to reach Alex, heedless of who else might be out there. He broke the surface.
Then he saw.
Alex was being rescued. And not by a man, not by a human being at all. One of her dolphins had come for her. Where the animal would go with her, he didn’t know.
“Alex!” he screamed again.
But she had grabbed hold of the dolphin’s dorsal fin, and the mammal could manage the wild surf as no man possibly could.
She was gone.
He treaded the water, watching as the dolphin and the woman disappeared in the night. The danger hadn’t abated in the least; it was increasing with every minute that went by. He was losing to the power of the water himself. Fighting hard despite his strength and ability, he made it back toward the beach. When he reached the shore, he collapsed, still half in the water.
A second later, someone dropped by his side.
Seymore. Apparently he had ditched his weapon, as well, equally determined to rescue Alex from the surf.
Both men realized where they were and jerked away from one another. Then both looked toward the weapons they had dropped. David could see Seymour’s muscles bunching, and he knew his were doing the same.
But Seymore cried out to him instead of moving. “Wait!”
David, wary, still hesitated.
“You had plenty of time to kill her,” Seymore said.
“You could have shot me,” David noted warily.
“You’d have shot back. But the point is…you dropped the speargun and went after Alex.”
“Of course I went after her! I love her.”
Seymore inhaled. “Listen to me, I didn’t kill anyone. I know you think it’s me, but I’m working with the FBI—”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. Now you’re a G-man.”
“No, I’m a special consultant. I thought you were killing people—until two minutes ago.”
David found himself staring at the man. His basic reaction was to distrust him, but there was something about the man he believed. Maybe the fact that the Glock had been a guarantee, the speargun a maybe.
Seconds ticked by. Alex was in the care of a creature that could survive the darkness and the elements better than any man. But she was still out there somewhere. And the greatest likelihood was that the dolphin would bring her back to the lagoon. It wouldn’t take the animal long.
There was also the matter of the man lying on the beach just feet away from them, possibly dying.
“I’m not the killer,” Seymore said.
“And neither am I,” David said harshly. More seconds ticked by.
Gut reaction. Dane had told him to go by his gut reaction.
He let another fraction of time go by. Then he moved.
Ignoring Seymore, he got to his feet quickly and walked over to the prone body of Len Creighton. There was blood on the man’s temple, but he still had a pulse.
“He’s alive,” David said. Hunkered down, he tried to assess the man’s condition quickly. Concussion, almost certainly. Shock, probably.
If they left him there, he would certainly die in the next onslaught of the storm. But if he was burdened with the man, Alex could die before he got back to her.
David’s back was to Seymore. The man could have picked up the gun and shot him, but he hadn’t.
David turned back to him. “He’s got to be taken to shelter.”
Seymore picked up the gun, shoving it into his belt. He stared at David, but, like him, he knew that time was of the essence.
“Alex is out there,” John said.
“Yes.”
“She’ll trust you before she trusts me, though she doesn’t seem to have much faith in either of us at the moment,” he said at last. “Go after Alex. I’ll take Len.” Then, true to his word, he bent down, lifting the prone man as if he were no more than a baby.
David hoped to hell the guy was really on his side. As an enemy, he would be formidable.
Was he wrong? Was this all part of an act? Were they all supposed to die tonight, but on Seymore’s own terms? He might be leaving Len to face instant death.
There wasn’t time to weigh the veracity of John Seymore’s words.
“Cottage eight was Ally and Zach’s. It’s probably open,” David said.
“Meet me there,” John Seymore said briefly.
There was nothing left to do. David turned, scooped up the speargun, and started running back toward the Tiki Hut and the dolphin lagoons.