Seduction

Twenty-seven

Theo knelt beside Jac. Her eyes were open but she wasn’t seeing him. He said her name. Once. Twice. A third time. The panic rose in him.

“Jac!”

She remained unresponsive.

It was happening again. He flashed back to the time they’d spent together as teenagers at Blixer Rath. Those horrible, wonderful days. Something like this, or exactly this, had happened once before. On his last day there. She’d been present and aware one minute and then gone the next. Not asleep exactly. Not unconscious, but totally unresponsive. He’d lifted her out of the water and half-carried, half-dragged her back to the clinic where Malachai Samuels had thrown questions at him while listening to Jac’s heartbeat, feeling her pulse, pulling down her eyelids.

Theo had watched in horror. He had never been more frightened. She was his friend. Fiery and stubborn. And of course, like him, damaged and vulnerable. The idea that he’d done something to her was more than he could bear.

Malachai had repeated her name several times. When she hadn’t responded… what had Malachai done? Theo tried to remember, but his mind was a blank. What should he do? What could he do? He tried to go back to that day. To build the doctor’s office in his mind. To see Jac on his couch.

Yes!

Ripping off his shirt, Theo dipped it in the water in the rut. As he did so he noticed for the first time that the floor around them was wet. Was the water from the rock splashing this far? He looked. No, the rising tide was doing more than swelling the waterfall, it was seeping into the cave.

He had to get Jac out of there. And it was going to be hard if she was still nonresponsive and half asleep like this. Theo needed her to be able to walk. As he wiped Jac’s face, he talked to her. His hand was on her back, supporting her. He felt her bones through her shirt. Felt where her flesh stopped and her bra started. He was unnerved by the intimacy.

Theo rewet his shirt and pressed it to Jac’s wrists, first the right and then the left, and then placed it on the back of her neck. He was fairly sure this was what the doctor had done. Chilled her blood and cooled her body temperature until she came to. But she wasn’t responding. Maybe he hadn’t kept it there long enough.

Again he wet the cloth and then wrapped it around Jac’s left wrist. Counted to thirty. Then the right wrist. Counted again.

What should he do if he couldn’t bring her out of this? How hard would it be to pull her through the narrow passages they had just traversed? And how much time did he have to wait before they’d be forced to leave?

The water level was rising quickly. His shoes were now soaked. Even if the inner chambers and tunnel didn’t completely flood, and he knew they didn’t from the water lines Jac had pointed out, it was possible the entrance might. He could probably wait it out, but what would happen to Jac if she stayed like this? How long was too long?

Pressing the shirt to the back of her neck again, he counted. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. They couldn’t swim for long in the sea this time of year. The temperature was too cold. Hypothermia was a threat to anyone who did cave explorations in Jersey. When he was a boy his mother had warned him and Ash about it all the time. No matter how warm it might be outside, freezing water could cause serious harm if they were submerged for too long.

Jac opened her eyes. Stared right at him. Frowned.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. She was looking around the cave: at the lantern on the rock slab, at the walls, at the monolithic stones, then down at the amber totem she was still holding.

The last thing she’d done before going into her trance was take it out of the niche, drop it, then retrieve it.

“We need to get out of here. The cave is filling up with water,” he said.

She didn’t react at all. Theo wondered if she’d even heard him.

“Fast,” he said urging her to focus.

“Brice?”

She was scrutinizing him as if she didn’t know who he was, and worse, was afraid of him.

“What?”

She said something quickly. A string of words that he couldn’t quite understand except for the repeated name, Brice.

“Jac, we’ve got to get out of here.” He took the carved figure from her, put it back in one of the niches. Then rethought that, picked it back up and pocketed it. Putting one arm around Jac’s waist, he tried to help her to stand. But she pushed him away.

The water level was creeping up. It was above his ankles now. It must be seeping in through multiple cracks and crevices. He felt his toes starting to go numb.

“You have to let me help you. We have to get out of here. The cave is flooding.” He pointed.

She looked.

Theo saw her eyes go wide with fear.

When he put his arm around her again, she didn’t push him off. As he helped her up, she faltered. It was as if she were drugged. She was disoriented but able to walk with his support, and that was all he cared about for now.

“Come on. This way.” He led her out of the cavernous chamber, into the next and finally into the tunnel. Here the water was almost up to their knees. It was extremely difficult to trudge through with her on his arm like a dead weight. She was leaning into him, and the journal he’d put in his pocket was pushing uncomfortably into his ribs. He probably should have left it where it was and come back for it. What if he slipped and got it wet? If the ink ran, everything Hugo wrote would be gone. How stupid he’d been.

Finally they made it out of the cave. The enclosure was filled up with water that lapped above Theo’s knees. How was he going to climb up and out of here with Jac?

Theo hadn’t taken the line in Hugo’s letter about the tides seriously enough-the phase of the moon will keep our secrets. The tide must have kept these caverns often inaccessible. Today he and Jac must have just caught the end of the hour when entering them was possible.

Suddenly Jac pulled away from him. She was wading to the wall. As if she had done it a dozen times, she put her hands on two protruding rocks Theo hadn’t even noticed, and began the climb out of the chasm.

Theo followed her, wondering as he watched her scale the wall without hesitation or faltering, how she had found the hand- and toeholds.

When she reached the ground up above, she took off without looking back or waiting for him. Walking quickly, she headed in the opposite direction from where the car was, where they’d come from. He called out to her, but she didn’t respond. He ran to catch up, reached her side, put his hand out to stop her.

“Jac, where are you going?” he asked. “My car is the other way.”

She frowned at him, quizzically.

Did she really not understand what he was saying?

He took her hand. “This way.”

As it had in the cave, as it had so many years ago, fear flooded her eyes. She tried to wrest free. He managed to hold on and pulled her toward the slipway and then to the parking area. When they reached his Jaguar, she gave his car the same uncomprehending look that she’d given him. He didn’t know what to do except force her into the car. But she fought back. Lashing out at him, Jac managed to punch him in the side of his head. Her moves were that of an experienced fighter, but her strength didn’t match her training. She hadn’t hurt him, only surprised him long enough to take off.

For one stunned moment he watched her running away, astounded. What was happening? He took off after her, trying to catch up, but she was fast and the best he could do was keep her in his sight.

They were out of the clearing and in the woods now. The wind sang in his ears. Branches snapped across his face. He called out to Jac to stop, but she either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. Theo wasn’t sure why, but he thought she wasn’t so much running away from him as toward something.

But that was impossible. She’d only been on the island for three days. She couldn’t know the way.

She was still running fifteen minutes later. And he was still lagging behind. He’d push himself to catch up, and then she’d find another reserve and sprint ahead. No matter how fast he ran, she ran faster. And then the unthinkable happened. He lost sight of her.

Dread mixed with adrenaline. What to do? Logic told him to just keep on, straight ahead. There was no way of knowing if she’d turned off. Another hundred meters and he saw the giant stones peeking through the trees. When he hit the clearing he didn’t slow down, and just missed tripping over her.

Jac lay prostrate in front of an outcropping of ancient rocks.

This was the circle of stones he’d been alternately terrified by and fascinated by as child, and which he most often gravitated to as a teenager. Even though it sometimes frightened him to be here, this was where he came to be alone. To think. To weep. This was where he felt the most in touch with himself. Even if that self was in hell.

At the far end of the circle, a dirt tunnel led to a shallow hollowed-out cavern. When he was a kid, he almost thought he could hear voices in there sometimes, echoes of people speaking, even though he knew no one was there. No one could be. The rock temple was a famous landmark on the island but few people visited because it was difficult to get to. Deep in a forest, access to it passed through land owned privately. You had to trespass to get to it.

He and Jac technically would have broken the law to get here if they were anyone else. But the stone edifice dug deep into the earth was on the Wells in Wood land.

Jac had taken him on a five-kilometer run, right back to his own home.

He watched her now, lying on the ground, her back racked with sobs. Her cries haunting yet somehow beautiful. An operatic aria of grief. It was a song to the dead, he thought. Although he wasn’t sure how he knew it, he was sure of it. She was honoring those long gone with a keening that bypassed his intellect and reached him purely emotionally. A song that rose to the heavens, implored the spirits, defied time.

It was here, hiding in these shadows, where he’d smoked pot while he cursed his father for being so strict and his brother for being so bloody perfect when he, Theo, was never even close to being good enough. It was here he came when he felt the most miserable and frustrated. Where he allowed himself to wallow in his depression. The one place in the world where he felt more alone and bereft yet complete than he did anywhere else.

How had she known this place was here? Why had she come? What did it mean to her?