While he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness, she’d stayed continually by his side. Jack couldn’t remember any time he’d awakened and not found her there. Her smile was gentle, her words encouraging, her touch tender. The truth was, in all his life, Jack had never had anyone care this much about him.
And sometime during the past few days, he’d fallen in love with her. In love with a woman already married to another man.
In a different situation, he would have made his escape. Fled temptation. Gotten the hell out of her life before he screwed it up. But now there was no place to run. They were trapped on this boat together.
One option was to make her hate him, freeze her out, be cruel. Say or do something that would keep her at arm’s length. But Jack discovered he couldn’t. He was half-inclined to credit his lack of resolve to his weakened condition, but that was a lie and he knew it. He was in love with Lorraine, and loving her prevented him from saying or doing anything that would bring her pain. That included what he wanted most, which was to touch her the way a lover would. Kiss her, make love to her, cherish her.
He cursed his weakness the night before, when he’d touched her breast. He’d wanted to do a lot more and was fully aware that she would have let him. He also knew that in time she’d come to regret it. When she returned to her husband, he vowed she’d go undefiled, without remorse, free of guilt.
What made his love for Lorraine beautiful, Jack reflected, was its purity. His relationship with Marcie and every other woman in his life had its existence primarily in the physical.
Not so with Lorraine. Their relationship had a physical dimension, but more than that, it had an emotional depth, even a spiritual one. He was a man who’d lived his life on the edge, emotionally distant; now he found himself in unfamiliar territory.
“Morning,” Lorraine greeted him as she stepped onto the deck with breakfast. It was ten days after the shooting. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” The first thing he noticed was that she didn’t sound quite like herself. He couldn’t stop looking at her. Sunlight surrounded her, giving her an angelic appearance. He wondered wryly if God planned to teach him a lesson and had sent Lorraine to torment him with all the might-have-beens.
Carrying the tray, she stepped out of the sunlight. Jack’s eyes narrowed when he saw her face. Something wasn’t right. She wasn’t good at hiding her emotions. It was one of the traits he liked so much about her.
“Raine.” He always called her that when he wanted a reaction.
She either ignored it or didn’t hear him. “I brought your breakfast.”
“What’s wrong?” He favored the direct approach.
She frowned at him as if she wondered how he knew.
“Tell me,” he ordered. He moved over, making space for her on the chair.
He read her hesitation. Then with a deep sigh, she sat down next to him. “Remember I told you I first tried to remove the bullet with tweezers?”
He nodded.
“Well…the tweezers were in my makeup case. I was in a hurry and I dumped out my purse on the mattress. I remember seeing something odd then, but didn’t take time to examine it. And afterward I just scooped everything up and put it back.”
“Something odd?”
“A…gold object. I didn’t know what it was or how it got into my bag, but it didn’t seem important at the time. I’m constantly putting things in my purse for one reason or another. I thought it might be a broken earring or a pin I’d forgotten. I didn’t think twice about it.”
“What is it?”
Lorraine reached for his hand and squeezed his fingers hard. “I…can’t tell you for sure what it is, but I can guess. And I have a strong suspicion about how it got there.”
“How?”
“Jason Applebee. I’m afraid it’s another artifact. Another of those star things.”
It’d been over a week now, and no one had seen or heard anything of Jack Keller, Lorraine Dancy or Scotch on Water. Jason had run the risk of capture and worse in his efforts to locate the woman—or more importantly, her purse. He was afraid she’d discovered the Mayan artifact he’d hidden inside the small zippered bag. If she hadn’t already found it, then it was only a matter of time.
At least he hadn’t put both pieces in her luggage. That would have been disastrous. To lose one half of the Kukulcan Star was bad enough, but both would be unthinkable. Intolerable. Too many people had already died. Mostly by his hand. Jason had put himself at risk time after time and refused to be thwarted now.
This penchant for killing had come as a surprise. Jason hadn’t realized he had any appetite for it. He’d prefer to avoid it, of course, but he’d learned that when it was a question of getting what he wanted murder came easy. Easier than he would’ve dreamed possible.
From the time he was a kid, archaeology had fascinated him, especially anything concerning the Maya. He’d studied it exhaustively, obsessively. As a teenager he’d come to identify with the Mayan god Kukulcan. Unlike him, though, Jason hadn’t taken a vow of celibacy. Hey, why should he deprive himself of sexual pleasure? Frankly he couldn’t see any reason not to indulge. In the end Kukulcan had broken his own vow and was overwhelmed by guilt. He’d set out on a snakeskin raft and sailed toward the east. According to myth, the raft had then burst into flames that consumed him. His heart rose heavenward and eventually merged with the sun. One day, it was said, Kukulcan would come back, and Jason had found the key to his promised return. He’d stolen the archaeological find of the century.
He felt his anger rise as he remembered that he’d already lost half the Star; he’d learned from the press and the radio that it had been returned to the museum—which meant it was more crucial than ever that he get the other half back.
But that half was in the possession of a woman, an imbecile who didn’t have a clue what she held in her hands.
Jason had called upon every resource available to him, to no avail. It was as if Scotch on Water had disappeared off the face of the earth, as if Lorraine and Jack Keller had vanished. Perhaps they’d been engulfed in flames themselves and drifted toward the sun. But they would resurface one day, and when they did, Jason would be waiting for them.