Connie had a sick look on her face. “I think you’ve all been watching too much Murder, She Wrote.”
“Why do you think he’s doing all this?” Billie asked her.
She wrinkled her nose and shrugged. “Because he’s nuts?”
“He’s nuts, all right,” Kimberly said. “Nuts if he thinks he’s gonna survive. First thing in the morning, I’m going after him.”
“We’ll all go after him,” Billie said.
DAY FIVE
War Dance
I didn’t have to stand watch last night. The women took turns, and let me sleep.
I woke up on my own. The sun had risen over the tops of the jungle trees, and threw warm gold across our beach. It sure felt good. I wanted to just keep lying there, enjoying it.
Billie and Connie were asleep nearby, but I couldn’t see Kimberly. After a while, I raised my head to look for her.
She was about midway between the campfire and the shoreline, swinging the ax. Exercising with it. Or practicing. She was as graceful as a dancer, twirling and smiting the air, springing forward to cut down an invisible enemy, taking swings to one side, then the other. She was a little spooky to watch. So smooth and graceful, yet wielding such a vicious weapon. The head of the ax glinted like silver in the sunlight. Her thick dark hair flowed and shook like the mane of a stallion.
She wore her dead husband’s Hawaiian shirt. Unbuttoned, as usual, its gaudy fabric flew out behind her like a cape when she lunged or twirled. Her white bikini flashed. Her bronze skin gleamed with sweat.
She was spooky, elegant, primitive, beautiful. It made me ache, watching her. I couldn’t force my eyes away.
Being stuck on this island is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. By that logic, of course, I ought to be thanking Wesley, not trying to kill him. Except that I hate him for bringing grief to Kimberly and Billie. And I hate him for what he might do to them, if he gets the chance. (I’m not tickled by the fact that he wants to kill me, either.) Anyway, Kimberly was spectacular to watch.
Until she noticed me watching. I felt like a peeping Tom who’d been caught in the act, but I smiled and waved. She waved back. I sat up, gave myself a couple of minutes to calm down, then got to my feet and wandered over to join her.
“Preparing for the big battle?” I asked.
She rested the ax on her shoulder, and smiled. She has a spectacular smile. “Just fooling around,” she said. “Getting a little workout.”
“You must be part Viking,” I said.
“That’s me, Nordic through and through.”
She was making sport of me, but I liked it. “I wasn’t referring to your complexion,” I explained. “It’s the way you swing that ax. Like you’ve got battle-axes in your blood.”
“Ah. That might be my Indian blood.”
“You’re Indian?”
“Injun. Part Sioux… Lakota.”
“You kidding me?”
“I swear.” With her free hand, she drew a quick X in the middle of her chest. “On my mother’s side. Her grandfather fought at Little Big Horn.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I have it on good authority that he personally scalped Custer.”
“Really?”
She grinned. “That was kidding.”
“Glad to hear it, because I don’t think Custer got scalped.”
“I don’t really know if my ancestor scalped anyone at all. He was there, though. That’s a fact.”
“My God.”
“So I guess maybe things like tomahawks, spears and knives might run in my blood. I’m also part Sicilian.”
“Sioux and Sicilian. Man! Red blood and hot blood. That’s a dangerous combination. Remind me not to make you mad at me!”
“Yep. Watch it. I’m hell on wheels.” Her smile died and her eyes went dark. For a while there, she must’ve forgotten about the murders of her husband and her father. But she had just remembered. I could see the pain in her face. And the anger.
Wesley had made a very big mistake, killing people Kimberly loved.
He’s already paid for the mistake, but I’ve got a feeling that his torments have hardly even started.
Wanting to take her mind off her grief, I said, “Boy, I didn’t think we’d be stuck on this island more than a day or two, did you?”
“An hour or two,” she said. “I thought for sure somebody must’ve seen the explosion. And even if nobody did… My God, it’s like a century too late to be getting marooned on an island.”
“Just goes to show, anything can happen.”
“Especially when there’s a devious bastard scheming to make it happen.”
“He must’ve filed a false itinerary,” I said. “Or, what do they call it, a float plan?” It was something I’d thought about and mentioned before, but now I felt certain of it. “That’s about the only way I can figure why we haven’t gotten rescued yet. Nobody’s looking for us. Either that, or they’ve been tricked into searching in the wrong places.”
“At this point,” Kimberly said, “I don’t even want to be rescued.”
Her words stunned me.
They echoed my own feelings on the subject.
This was the start of our fifth day on the island. In some ways, it seems like we’d been here for years. Mostly, though, it seems like much too short a time. Thanks to all our troubles with Wesley, we haven’t even explored the island, yet. There’s no telling what we might find, or what adventures we might have over the coming days—or weeks. Or even months.
Rescue would put an abrupt end to all the fabulous possibilities.
I figured that Kimberly must feel the same way, but then she said, “I’m not leaving this island till I’ve taken care of Wesley.”
“You already got him pretty good.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
The way she said it, and the way she looked when she said it, gave me a shiver up my back.
Preparations
I did some quick catch-up on the journal while the gals got ready for our jungle excursion.
Our hunt.
Our mission to rescue Thelma and finish off Wesley.
Before leaving, we had a small meal and discussed what to do about the fire. So far, we’d followed Andrew’s advice about never letting it go out. But we figured we might be gone all day. If we wanted to keep it burning, we would almost have to leave someone behind to tend it.
We were not about to leave anyone alone.
But if we let two stay behind to guard each other and watch the fire, that would leave only two for the hunt.
Which, we all agreed, would be ridiculous.
We decided to let the fire burn out.
Anyway, we still had Andrew’s lighter.
Billie went over to her sleeping area and looked for it. She found Andrew’s khaki shorts, picked them up, and searched the pockets. She emptied them as she went along, pulling out such things as his pipe, tobacco pouch, billfold, keys, and the white handkerchief that he had placed over Keith’s dead face. Soon, she came hurrying back with the shorts in one hand, the lighter in the other.
She tested the lighter. A flick, and the flame leaped up.
She had brought the khaki shorts over to us because she thought someone ought to wear them. “They’ve got such great, deep pockets,” she explained.
Obviously, we could use something for carrying odds and ends.
Aside from Andrew’s shorts, the only pocket in sight was the one on the chest of Kimberly’s Hawaiian shirt—a pocket so loose and flimsy that she didn’t even trust her Swiss Army knife to it.
There was my bag, of course. I’d hidden it under some rags over at my sleeping place, for safe keeping. I planned to leave it there, because I sure didn’t want to spend the day hiking through the jungle with that on my back. (It’s the home of my journal, which is a big thick spiral notebook—probably weighs at least two pounds.) “Who wants to wear them?” Billie asked, holding up Andrew’s shorts.