Island

I was fearless.

If any jungle creatures came after me, they'd better watch out.

As for the killer -- I counted on him being too far away to nail me. Even though I had no idea how large the island might be, and he'd had about three hours to make his comeback, I was convinced that he must still be miles away.

Anyway, he was bound to kill me sooner or later.

And nobody would likely give a damn, anyhow.

I was still on my way through the sand, striding with bitterness and determination toward the place where the stream entered the jungle, when Kimberly called out from behind me, "Rupert! What are you doing?"

I glanced back. "Just thought I'd check out the lagoon."

"Are you nuts? Get back here."

"I won't be long." I started walking backward. All four of the gals were looking at me.

"Rupert!" Billie yelled.

"You can't go off by yourself," Kimberly called to me. "If you have to go to the lagoon, we'll all go."

"I don't have to." I suddenly felt a little bit like a jerk. Pleased that somebody cared, after all -- but a jerk for being so self-centered and making myself a nuisance.

"I think we all oughta have something to eat," Thelma said. "What do the rest of you think? Cause, I mean, I'm kind of starving here."

"Good idea," I said.

As soon as I started back, all the gals quit paying attention except for Kimberly. She didn't take her eyes off me. I pretty much kept my eyes on her, too.

She stood in the sand with her feet apart, her Hawaiian shirt blowing behind her in the breeze, her hair blowing, too. Her left hand was planted on her hip, which was bare except for the thin band of her bikini pants. Her right hand held a spear. With its end in the sand by her foot, the spear was higher than her head.

I wish I could've taken a picture of her.

Andrew did bring a camera with him. (Which I'd forgotten about until seeing Kimberly in such an awesome pose.) It should be in the picnic basket. As far as I know, nobody has taken it out since the boat exploded. I guess I'll leave it there. For one thing, the camera doesn't belong to me. For another, I'd look pretty creepy trotting around shooting snapshots on a day like this.

We should've taken photos of the bodies.

Nobody thought of it. Everyone else must've forgotten about the camera, the same as me.

Photographs would've been a really good way to show the authorities how Keith and Andrew were killed. (Andrew is out to sea, but we could still unearth Keith and get some shots. I'm not about to suggest it, though.) Anyway, my mood underwent a major change because of Kimberly calling me back -- not to mention the way she looked.

We gathered at the supply pile (preferring to avoid the campfire with its heat), and sat on the sand around it. As usual, Billie took charge of the food. We ate crackers and cheese left over from the picnic. There was sharp, Swiss cheese, and smoked Edam. She sliced the cheeses with Andrew's Swiss Army knife. She also popped open a bottle of wine that Keith had brought up from the bottom of the inlet. It was a Glen Ellen Cabernet Sauvignon. Though warm, it tasted awfully good. We passed it around, and took sips while we ate our cheese and crackers -- and talked.

There was "small talk" at first. About the food and wine and weather. Like everyone wanted to avoid mentioning the nasty stuff. After about ten minutes of that, Kimberly said, "I saw who did it."

Wham.

Silence.

Everybody stopped chewing and stared at her.

We knew she meant the killer.

She'd been swimming out toward the dinghy with her head down, most of the time, so I think the rest of us assumed she hadn't gotten a look at him.

We waited for her to say the killer's name.

But her face told us who she'd seen.

Thelma said, "No."

"I'm sorry," Kimberly said. She looked terribly solemn.

"Wesley's dead!"

"He isn't. I saw him plain as day."

"No, you didn't!"

"I'm sorry, Thelma. It was him. He's the one I saw. He's the one who murdered Dad."

"You're lying!"

Kimberly shook her head. "I thought long and hard about whether I should tell. I almost decided to pretend I hadn't seen who did it. Pretending wouldn't do us any good, though. I know it's tough, but you've got to face it. Wesley's alive, and he's killing us."

"No!" Thelma blurted. "It's a lie!" She started to blubber. She still held a half-eaten cracker with a slab of half-eaten cheese on top. I expected her to throw it. Instead, she shoved it into her mouth. Then she flopped over and scurried away from us on her hands and knees. When she was clear of the group, she staggered to her feet and trotted away.

Kimberly started to get up.

Billie raised a hand and shook her head slightly. "We've gotta make some plans. She'll be all right."

Kimberly stayed.

Thelma stopped just short of the water's edge, then sat down on the sand, her back to us.

With Thelma out of earshot, a change came over Kimberly. She let her anger out. "The dirty bastard. I knew it had to be him. He's gotta be the one who killed Keith, too."

"He probably plans to kill us all," Billie said.

"Guys first," I added.

"What're we gonna do?" Connie asked. She seemed more frightened than her mother or Kimberly.

"We can't just sit around and wait for him to make the next move," Billie said.

"That'd be me," I said.

Though Billie nodded in agreement, she said, "It might just be the next person he happens to catch off guard. I realize he started with Keith, then got Andrew, but . . . he couldn't possibly have known who'd be going after the dinghy this morning." She hesitated. "When I think how close we came to letting it go . . ."

"If I'd kept my big mouth shut," Connie said.

"It wasn't that," I told her. "Andrew wasn't about to let it go."

"I could've stopped him," Billie said.

"Nobody's to blame," Kimberly said. "Nobody but Wesley."

"He's awfully damn sneaky," I said. "We'll really have to watch ourselves."

"We'll have to do more than that," Billie said.

Kimberly nodded. "We need a plan of action."

"I still think we oughta get off the island." That was Connie, of course.

"No," Billie said. "Your dad was absolutely right about that: we've got food and water here. We can survive indefinitely."

"Yeah, right. Look what happened to him."

"Wesley did that," Kimberly said. "What we've gotta do is eliminate Wesley."

"Or eliminate ourselves," I suggested.

Billie asked, "What do you mean?"

"He can't kill us if he can't find us."

"You mean we should try to hide?"

"It's just a thought. The thing is, we'd have to find him before we could do anything to put him out of action. That might be a pretty good trick. But he knows exactly where we are. We're almost always in plain right, here on the beach. All he has to do is hang back in the jungle and spy on us till he spots an opportunity to strike. But what if he comes looking for us and we aren't here?"

"He'd find us," Connie said. Always the optimist.

"Not necessarily."

Frowning, Kimberly said, "I'm not too crazy about playing hide and seek with the bastard. I want to take him out. Hunt him down and kill him."

"Why not draw him in and kill him?" Billie suggested.

"How would we do that?" Kimberly asked.

"Pull a disappearing act," Billie explained, giving me a nod. "Lure him in and ambush him."

I liked the sound of that.

From the look on Kimberly's face, so did she. "How would we pull it off?" she asked.

Billie shrugged. "We'll have to figure something out."

So we sat there talking about it, tossing schemes back and forth as we passed around the bottle of wine. We were in agreement on the general principle of the thing, but kept running into the same snag; we had to figure that Wesley might already be watching us. How could we possibly pull off a vanishing act (especially one that would allow us to hide nearby and attack him), right in front of his eyes?