Rapture

Jeff pursed his lips and looked up and down the chilly gray beach with its lumpy dunes and thickening mist. The whitecaps were like razor cuts in the slate sea. The air was quiet and damp but charged with risks and chances, impossible choices.

"You're very bright and very brave," he told Bonnie, "but you fall short in your knowledge of human nature."

"It's been such a great weekend, until now," she said, trying to find a positive note. "Think about how I made love to you, Jeff. I wasn't just going through the motions. You know I made love to you like I cared about you and wanted you, like it meant something to me. Because that's the truth-I did care about you, I did want you, and it did mean something to me. Do you really think I could have done that if I thought you were the one who shot my father?"

She was good, she was making an effort, but she was out of her depth, Jeff thought. She was a precocious child, nothing more.

"So you don't think I killed him?"

"Well, no. I think you would have said so before, when I had the ..." She couldn't bring herself to mention the knife. Then, a final inspiration. "You love my mother. You wouldn't ever hurt her like that."

Jeff put his arm around Bonnie's shoulders and walked her into the shelter of the dunes. They sat down together. He stuck the knife into the sand beside him and held her close, embraced and kissed her. He stroked her hair and face. Bonnie responded eagerly, like a person reaching for a life line. It took him a minute or two to find the carotid artery in her neck. The security chief at Lisker-Benedictus had taught him this maneuver a few years ago. He gently increased the pressure until she sagged against him and passed out. He held her for a few more moments, thinking how beautiful she looked. What a waste! But it seemed to be the only way.

He took the knife, tested the blade, and found it very sharp. She hadn't lied about that. He pulled his shirttail out and used it to wipe the knife clean of fingerprints and transfer it to Bonnie's right hand, carefully wrapping her fingers around the handle. Then he opened her left wrist and watched the warm blood jet out of her onto the cold sand. A thin vapor rose from the growing pool. The red was almost too bright, but it quickly dulled and blackened as it spread and soaked into the sand.

Bonnie stirred two or three times, but Jeff applied his fingers to her neck and put her under again. After a while she became too weak to resist. She didn't seem to know what was happening, which pleased him. Such a strong young heart, mightily pumping the life out of her. He was awed and fascinated by the sight of it, and a little sad. But then he reminded himself that Bonnie had never been more than a diversion. Close but not the real thing. She had nearly won his heart, he thought, but in the final analysis that was impossible.

When the flow of blood was no more than a bare trickle and Jeff couldn't detect a heartbeat, he left, taking the Scotch bottle with him. He didn't try to cover his tracks completely, but obscured them enough so that no particular shoe print remained. They would know someone had been with her-a friendly accomplice, he hoped they would think. After he pulled the car out onto the road, he ran back to blur the tire tracks in the sand. It was the best he could do in an unfortunate situation. Let them make of it what they could.

He was thinking of Georgianne. She didn't know it yet, but she was alone now. She was about to endure another terrible shock. Jeff thought of it as somehow purifying. She'd come out of it eventually, and in a way she'd be back to where she was twenty-one years ago, alone, on her own. That was what he had achieved for her, and for himself. This time he wouldn't falter. Georgianne would need him, more than ever. And he would be there.

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PART V

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The Land of

Lost Content

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Jeff couldn't sleep that night at the Cambridge Hyatt. Not guilt, but attention to detail kept him awake. He could have checked out immediately and caught a late flight to the West Coast, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself by leaving in a rush. You make mistakes that way. Besides, he didn't think Bonnie would be found that quickly.