Breach Of Promise

“Jesus H. Christ,” a thick voice came up from down around his feet. “ ’Dixie’? Please don’t tell me you’re whistling ’Dixie’?”

Paul shut up.

“Mind telling me,” Winston said very slowly, and although he was enunciating carefully, his words slurred, “what this rope’s all about? That in combination with your choice in music is…” There was a long pause while Winston shaped his uncooperative mouth around the cumbersome words, “unpleasantly suggestive.” He struggled to pull himself up. Paul reached over to help him to the seat beside him.

“Well, good buddy,” began Paul, figuring there was no time like the present to clear the air. “You’ve got some explaining to do.” They had reached the narrow aisle of water between two jutting peninsulas that led into Emerald Bay. Paul maneuvered into the middle and headed in.

“Without a jury out and needing my attention, I hear well enough,” said Genevieve. Apparently reluctant to discuss further her miraculously restored hearing, Genevieve, scrawny but muscular under her clothing, balled up a fist, and slammed Nina in the face.

Nina fell down. Trying to catch herself on one of the seats, she put out a hand, but she was falling too hard. She heard more than felt her wrist crack. She tried to recall moves from her martial-arts courses, but her mind was filled by the growing darkness and Genevieve’s astonishing transformation from colleague to deadly foe. She jumped up as fast as she could, trying to regain some footing on the slippery deck, but Genevieve was ready for her. In a fast movement, all too spookily familiar, just like the night that had sent Rachel and Mike over the side of the Dixie Queen, she took hold of Nina’s ankles and lifted her over.

“You should have let me knock you out,” she said, unaccountably holding tightly on to Nina’s ankles. “But it’s not that easy to do, you know. Damn. I knew I must have dropped that bug in Winston’s office when we knocked my purse over during one last, very memorable lunch. Too bad you found it before I did.”

Nina’s face went straight into the icy blue. The shock… She bent her neck back to clear the water, pushing with all her might against the side of the boat with her good hand, trying to scramble her way back up into the boat, but she could feel the groaning of her backbone. Chunky waves rushed up to greet her, blurring her eyes and washing into her mouth and nose. “Genevieve, let go!” she said, spitting water.

As Nina lurched and lunged, Genevieve’s grip on her ankles tightened. “If you had just arrived ten minutes later, given me time to drown Winston, you’d be cruising along in the other boat with your boyfriend, having a grand time. Doesn’t that just stink? Shoot, Nina. I didn’t want to have to kill you. It’s just a total pisser.” Out of breath with her exertions, she proceeded to push Nina down deeper, until Nina thought her back would crack. She intended to drown her, Nina realized, numb with cold and already exhausted. Then Paul would find Genevieve alone, with some neat excuse about Nina’s disappearance. By the time Paul could check her story, Nina would be dead, her body gone to rest with the drowned sailor’s.

“This is exactly what happens when you can’t plan in advance. Otherwise, I’d have made it easier on you,” Genevieve said in a feat of almost superhuman determination, shoving Nina down hard. Nina clung to the side, raising her head above the water, and when Genevieve realized she couldn’t just drown her by hanging her over the side, she tried lifting Nina’s limp body up and down against the boat to knock the fight out of her. Waves of unconsciousness swept over Nina. She was tiring fast…

“Winston was so easy,” Genevieve continued, and it was so strange, the way she wanted to explain, as if she still considered Nina a friend, and stranger still that Nina had the sense left in her bruised skull to follow her words. “Not that I wanted to hurt him. I’ve had so much fun with Winston,” she said wistfully. “I just love that big guy. And he’s been great to me. But, unfortunately, once you found that bug, Winston posed an unacceptable threat. He loves champagne, and what the hell, it seemed fitting, so I spiked it. We drank a couple of toasts…”

She was thoughtful. “Even that other guy died pretty quick. There was all that catered food in the hallway outside the clerk’s office, just waiting for a little Southern spice, a dose of peanut for his very special meal before it went into the jury room. His even had a vegetarian label on it. And there I was passing by with my comfort food, peanut butter sandwich in hand. It was made to order. Don’t you just hate picky people,” she said. “Don’t you just despise them?”

“Weren’t you afraid you’d be seen?” Nina gasped.

“I’d been in that hall a half dozen times during the trial avoiding the press or following that flirt Winston around. Nobody took any notice of me at all.”

Nina was out of time. One more thump against the side would be the end of her. Catching Genevieve during a lifting motion, using both hands, even the one she now thought might be broken, howling with pain, she pushed off the boat straight into the lake. Genevieve, hunched over the side and caught by surprise by Nina’s choice of direction, lost her footing and tumbled into the water right behind Nina.

Nina opened her eyes and saw that she was underwater, sinking like a stone into the black depths of Lake Tahoe. Maybe from the time she came up here the lake had been waiting to take her, as it had others in the past, that sailor, the victim in her first murder trial. She kicked hard against the suction, wondering how deep she was, wondering how long her stretched lungs would hold out before they spewed out air and replaced it with water. Exhausted, pierced by pain in one arm, with no idea how far she had to go, she began paddling frantically and struck something. A boulder. She followed it up and burst through the membrane between water and air. Although the boulder was completely submerged, she could stand on it and get at least part of her body out of the water.

The wind hurt worse than the water. She had to get back to land, had to. The island was fewer than a hundred feet away. She should be able to swim that in a few minutes… Her body could not handle the searing cold. Goose bumps patterned like a relief map rose to different levels on every surface of her skin and she was shivering until her teeth rattled.

Completely drained of energy, panting, she examined the cove for Genevieve, spotting her instantly on the sand nearly hidden behind a bush. Genevieve had gone for the kayak. She would take the boat and get away. Nina watched, impotent, sucking in great gulps of the thin cold air, as Genevieve bent over to untie the yellow kayak, dragged it to the water, and jumped in, pushing off with a paddle. Galvanized, Nina went after her.

Swimming silently near the surface of the rough water, with one arm dragging at her side, trying to stay submerged, Nina came up along one side of the boat and heaved, using both arms, even the injured one, screaming to relieve the pain she felt. Genevieve went over. Without waiting for Genevieve’s next spontaneous act, Nina yanked her off the kayak. When they reached the surface simultaneously, she balled her fist up tightly, as Genevieve had, and walloped Genevieve on the chin as hard as she could.

Genevieve’s eyes shut. She sank, but Nina took hold of her hair and hauled her back up. Nina had done it. A knockout punch, one that would have done Mike Markov proud…

Nina tried to hold on to the kayak and use it as a float, but she couldn’t hold Genevieve and the kayak. For a long moment, she allowed herself to consider letting Genevieve go. She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t. With a groan of resignation, she let the boat float away.

Kicking them both back to the island without using her hurt arm proved difficult but not impossible. By the time she dragged Genevieve up onto the rocks by the cove, both Matt’s boat and the yellow kayak were bobbing merrily hundreds of yards away, completely out of reach. She fell beside Genevieve on the sand, half dead from the cold, stretched out, and lapsed into a stupor of exhaustion.