Swept Away 2 (12 page)

The Robert/Roland discrepancy.

The e-mails I’d hacked from Ginny’s computer, containing my highlights and notes. (Ethan doesn’t do much hacking anymore, but his skills once rivaled mine. He’d never tried to hack
me
before, Diary...but I guess there’s a first time for everything. I also guess I’ll be needing to increase security measures on my servers.)

My unknown whereabouts during the three days surrounding Ginny’s death. My alibi was that I was on a business trip to Prague—airtight, as far as I knew, but, again, Ethan is wily. He actually flew to Prague without my knowledge and discovered that although I had checked in to the hotel, no one actually could remember seeing me until two days after Ginny’s death.

A receipt from Starbucks in the Denver airport dated the day before Ginny’s death, found buried in a coat pocket.

Several sightings of a single woman who matched my description at the resort that weekend.

He knew about Susanna. That bitch Ginny must’ve blabbed to him.

Of course this was all circumstantial, and Daddy’s lawyer could’ve swatted each annoying bit of “evidence” away as if it were a mosquito buzzing in his ears.

But it was enough for Ethan. I’d made enough small errors that Ethan lost faith in me.

In the end, it was my own fault. Chalk it up to another learning experience. I will not make the same mistakes again.

“You did do it, didn’t you?” my father asked me gently, after presenting Ethan’s position. “You killed Ginny?”

That was so unimportant. So completely irrelevant.

Ethan was leaving me. HE WAS LEAVING ME.

“Where is he?” I screamed.

“He’s gone, Justine. He’s just gone.”

The rage that consumed me was all-powerful, more consuming than it’s ever been. The only two people in the world that I loved had betrayed me. I hated them both.

And Daddy was right there. I yanked open my drawer and pulled out the scissors.

“Justine…?” My father looked so sad at that moment, like I’d disappointed him beyond measure. Well, too bad.

I’ve never accused my father of stupidity, and I still don’t. He was ready for this. As soon as I rose with the scissors and pointed them at my father, men rushed in—men that I’ve never seen before. They wrestled the scissors from my grip. I screamed and screamed as they carried me away.

Four months, Dear Diary. That is how long I’ve been separated from you. And from Ethan.

I’ve been locked away, with no computers, no way to communicate with the outside world, no diary. I’ve been hounded incessantly by shrinks. They treated me for a major depressive episode precipitated by the breakup. I was doped up on meds again in the hospital, but I’ve already stopped taking them.

Daddy didn’t tell them about Ginny. He only told them I was overwrought and deeply depressed about my breakup with my boyfriend. I love him again, for that alone. He’s a loyal man, my father.

Still, Ethan’s final visit scared the hell out of my father. I’m all he has left, and even that paltry evidence was enough to make Daddy quake in his boots. Thoughts of spending the rest of my life in prison danced in his head, and he did what he could to nip that horrible image in the bud, his loyalty and love for me his only motivation.

He told Ethan that the thought that I might have done something to Ginny was ridiculous, and the situation with Susanna was a huge misunderstanding that was exaggerated due to his own wealth and position.

Then he told Ethan that if he really felt he could no longer trust me, he should leave. Daddy made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He bought out Ethan’s part of the company with a more than fair premium and a ridiculously huge sum as a “bonus.” What it really was was hush money. The implicit agreement being that Ethan would never reveal what truly happened to Ginny.

Ethan left me a letter. It was short—Ethan is not one for writing long, flowery declarations. Here it is in its entirety:

Justine,

I’m sorry. I know that leaving like this is the worst thing a man could do, but your dad promises me that this is different, that it’s actually the
only
thing I can do.

I love you, but I can’t do this. I don’t need to explain myself, because I’ve never been closer to anyone than I’ve been to you, and you’ll know, better than anyone, why I had to leave.

I hope you find help, Justine. There’s a good person in there buried behind all the anger and pain. I hope you’ll be able to find her again one day.

Love,

Ethan

The letter was good for me. It gave important information. The most important of which, of course, was “I love you.”

Ethan still loves me. If nothing else, I can hang on to that.

Ethan took the money and left, covering up his tracks as best he could. But honestly, he knows it’s useless. He’s an important man now, with all that wealth my father has shared with him. And he knows I can manipulate technology to my whim.

Ethan Williams knows there might be distance between us, but the way I feel about him will never change.

I will be with him wherever he goes.

Chapter Nineteen

It is like a never-ending nightmare. I awaken, cry, sleep again. The cold is paralyzing. My dreams are of drowning. Of Kyle drowning. Pain covers me like a blanket, inside and out, physically and emotionally. There’s a fog of coldness and misery and pain that I’ll never break free from. I’m going to be here forever. In this frigid, dark place…

Ethan moves around, checking things, doing things. Then he notices me stirring and comes to me, again and again, holding me, stroking my terribly matted hair, until I doze off in the safety of his arms. He does this all night long, and by the time dawn washes its gray sheen over the horizon, he hasn’t taken a moment to himself to snatch a second of sleep.

Morning comes slowly, listlessly, reflecting how I feel. The sky is dull, and the ocean isn’t the angry, churning death trap it was last night but a sullen thing, the color of slugs, with no rhyme or reason to the lumpy waves that roll under us, tossing us this way, then that.

I’m awake but unmoving, gazing up at the orange peak of the covering above me. This cover is supposed to protect me from the harsh effects of the sun. But it can’t protect me from losing Kyle.

I close my eyes. He could be fine. Ethan and I are fine. Kyle could be fine too.

And Nalani. So consumed by everything else, I’ve barely thought about her. Guilt swarms me. I know what it feels like to drown now, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Ever. Nalani has to be okay. And so does Kyle. If he’s not okay…

I imagine his face, all the smiles he’s given me over the years. Each of them feels like a little gift. The clownish smiles, the wicked smiles, the friendly smiles, the exuberant smiles. All of them make Kyle who he is, the boy who was my first friend when my parents died. The man who stood by my side, day in and day out, after fate took Emily from me.

Ethan moves over me, pushing a lump of wet hair out of my face. The cold is so pervasive, I can’t even shiver anymore. Every inch of me is wet to my bones.

“Hey,” he says gruffly.

He’s gorgeous, even now, with his hair slicked down with seawater and a slight gray pallor to his skin. His five-o’clock shadow is well on its way into the beginnings of a beard, and his eyes look incredibly, impossibly blue in the dim light. “Hey,” I say, so hoarse, the word sounds like little more than a scratchy breath.

He helps me sit up. I’m shaky, not from the bone-deep cold, but because I seem to have lost all use of my muscles during the night. My chest hurts inside—probably from inhaling seawater. The skin of my chest and side throb from where my body scraped against the hatch when Ethan pulled me out. My limbs feel rubbery and weak.

He lifts a silver packet with a straw sticking out of it like one of those juice packs. “Water,” he explains.

He pushes the straw between my lips. The liquid is hands-down the most incredibly delicious water I’ve ever tasted. It’s like drinking strength. It goes smoothly down my throat, seeming to heal whatever it touches in its path.

I suck the whole thing down, and when he draws it away, I’m able to take in my surroundings in a new light. There is a bit of water in the crevices in the floor of the raft, but it’s nowhere as deep as it was last night. Ethan must have bailed it out.

An open box filled with various items rests on the rubber floor—a first-aid kit, flares, flashlight, etcetera. A fishing rod and two wooden paddles lie beside the box, as well as a few extra packets of drinking water.

The door flap is open, and I turn my gaze there to see there’s still nothing out there but gray sky and grayer seas.

I think of Kyle and close my eyes. But I mutter, “Will they find us?”

“Yes. Sometime today.”

“How do you know?”

“The
Temptation
had an EPIRB with a built-in GPS.”

“Right.” Some distant part of my brain remembers Nalani telling me about the EPIRB—the radio beacon that, when immersed in water, sends out a distress signal along with GPS coordinates. I think of the
Temptation
, how it is now most certainly at the bottom of the ocean, and I close my eyes.

If Mick didn’t take it, if it was working, the EPIRB is submerged in water right now. It would have definitely sent out its signal.

That’s what I need to believe happened, because I can’t think about the alternative, about how long Ethan and I would last floating on a life raft in the Pacific Ocean.

“We’re not far from Hawaii,” Ethan continues, “so I’m guessing they’ve already sent the coast guard. They’ll go to the origin of the beacon first, then search the surrounding area. They’ll know the wind direction, speed, and currents, so they’ll be able to chart our most likely position and find us.”

He seems very sure of that, which is a small relief. “Did you see Kyle or Nalani at all after the explosion?”

He shakes his head. “I was dealing with a line that came loose on the starboard bow just above Mick’s bunk when it happened. Kyle was back on the bridge, steering.” Ethan speaks quietly, and his eyes are full of sadness and remorse. “The explosion… It originated in your cabin, Tara.”

A deep shudder runs through me all the way from my toes up to my scalp. “So Mick really was targeting me.” My tone is without inflection, without emotion.

“Yes,” says Ethan. He looks away, but I can see that telltale twitching muscle in his cheek.

“What happened after the explosion?” I ask him softly.

“I was thrown back—slammed into the cabin window—and I’m pretty sure I passed out for a few minutes.”

He was lucky he wasn’t knocked overboard. But then again, he was certainly using a safety harness.

Since Kyle was on the bridge, he probably hadn’t been in a harness like Ethan had. He could have been blown overboard with the sheer force of the blast.

No. I can’t think like that. Because I’ll fall apart again if I do.

“When I woke up,” Ethan continues, “I heard you calling out for me and Kyle. It was hard to pinpoint where you were at first. It was hard to make sense of anything. I couldn’t see Kyle—I couldn’t see the bridge at all. I think the explosion tore the boat into two or three pieces.”

I blow out a shaky breath.

“But I followed your voice to Mick’s bunk.” He pauses, frowning. “Why were you in Mick’s bunk?”

“I was searching for clues.”

He seems to mull over this. “Did you find anything?”

“Nothing.”

“We don’t need clues. We know he was the one who did all that shit.”

“I wasn’t searching for clues to implicate him. I was trying to find something that would tell me why he did it.”

Ethan sits back, leaning against the side of the raft and gazing to the outside. “Being in his cabin saved your life.”

We lapse into silence, and, eventually, he turns to me. His eyes are glassy. “I saw you,” he says hoarsely, “struggling to open that damned hatch. I couldn’t open it.” He holds out his hands, and I can see, even in the dim light, that his nails are torn and his fingertips are bloody. “It was latched from your side. I tried, but I couldn’t.”

He looks down, pressing his forehead to his knees, and his shoulders shudder.

For a moment, I feel empty, like a rusty gas can. But then I fill up with emotions so rapidly, they overflow. I lurch toward him, making the whole raft bend and shudder under my weight, and I wrap my arms around him. “You saved me,” I tell him, kissing his damp shirt, his neck, the scruff on his jaw. “You saved me. I thought I was going to die, and you saved me.”

I would be dead twice over without him.
Dead.
Lying faceup in the water with my eyes open and staring blankly at the sky, my hair fanning in long blonde strands all around my head.

I would cry, but there aren’t any tears left. They were all used up last night. Instead, I kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until he turns and cups my face in his hands and gives me a long, passionate, salty kiss full of such intensity it leaves me breathless and moaning.

“I can’t lose you, Tara,” he whispers against my lips. “I can’t.”

Does this mean he wants to continue things beyond Honolulu?

I can’t ask him. It seems a silly, stupid, meaningless question when we’re drifting aimlessly in the Pacific Ocean waiting to be rescued and while Kyle is out there somewhere. Maybe he’s the one floating on his back, his green eyes staring up at the sky…

No.

I pull back from Ethan, and for the first time, I notice he’s bleeding down the front of his shoulder. A wound gapes under the ragged, long tear in his shirt, still oozing blood. “What happened?” I gasp.

He gazes down at it as if just noticing it for the first time, his eyes widening. Then he gives me a one-shouldered shrug.

God, he looks wrecked. Still beautiful, but wrecked. His blue, blue eyes are set in hollow sockets. Behind his stubble, his face is pale. A deep crease carves the skin between his brows. And his lips are white. He’s either utterly exhausted or in shock.

God, I’m so selfish. He comforted me all night, but he’s gone through the same thing I have. I haven’t comforted him at all.