Scorpion Reef Read Online Free Page B

this far. With the equipment she had—even with that wedding ring showing—all she had to do was stumble. But what other explanation was there? She’d deliberately thrown the gun in the lake. I gave up.
    I was reaching for a cigarette when I suddenly heard footsteps outside on the pier. I held still and listened. They couldn’t be hers. She was barefoot. Or even if she’d already changed and put her shoes on, this wasn’t the clicking of a woman’s high heels. It was a man. Or men, I thought. It sounded as if there were two of them. They came aboard and into the living-room, the scraping of their shoes loud and distinct in the hush. I stiffened, hardly breathing now.
    Detectives? Wayne himself? Suddenly I remembered the way she’d doubled all over town getting out on the highway and how she’d kept watching the rearview mirror. I cursed her bitterly and silently. This was wonderful. This was all I lacked—getting myself shot, or named correspondent in a divorce suit. And for nothing, except having my face slapped around under my ear.
    I looked swiftly around the room. There was no way out. The window was too small. I eased across the carpet until I was against the door, listening.
    “Well, it’s the scenic Mrs. Macaulay,” a man’s voice said. “You don’t mind if we look around, do you?”
    Mrs. Macaulay ? But that was what he’d said.
    “What do you want, now?” Her voice was little more than a whisper, and it was scared.
    “The usual,” the man replied easily. “Tiresome, aren’t we?”
    “Can’t you ever understand that I don’t know where he is?” she said passionately. “He’s gone. He left me. I don’t know where he went. I haven’t heard from him—”
    “A bit tiresome yourself, if you don’t mind my saying so. We’ve heard the routine. But to get back to the present moment—we found your making two trips out here in twenty-four hours rather intriguing, and thought we’d look into it. Might even take up nature study ourselves. Now, where’s Macaulay? Is he up here?”
    “He’s not up here, and I don’t know where he is—”
    Her voice cut off with a gasp, and then I heard the explosive impact itself. It came again. And then again. She apparently tried to hold on, but she began to break after the third one and the sob which was wrung from her wasn’t a cry of pain but of utter hopelessness. I gave it up then, too, and came out.
    There were two of them. The one to my left lounged on the arm of an overstuffed chair, lighting a cigarette as I charged into the room. I saw him only out of the corners of my eyes because it was the other one I was after. He was turned the other way. He had her backed up against one end of the sofa and off balance with a knee pressed into her thighs while he held her left wrist and the front of her bathing suit with one hand and hit her with the other. He wasn’t as tall as she was, but he was big across the shoulders. It was utterly methodical, efficient, and sickening.
    I caught the arm just as he drew it back again. He dropped her. She fell across the sofa. He was blazingly fast, and even taken by surprise that way he was falling into a crouch and bringing his left up as he stepped back. But I was already swinging, and it was too sudden and unexpected for even a pug to get covered in time. He was still moving back and off balance when it landed, and he kept going. He bounced off the arm of another overstuffed chair, and rolled. He brought up against a three-legged wall table near the door. It fell over on him.
    I started for him again, but something made me jerk my eyes around to the other one. Maybe it was just a flicker of movement. It couldn’t have been any more than that, but now instead of a cigarette lighter in his hand there was a gun.
    He gestured casually with the muzzle of it for me to move back and stay there. I moved. There was something about him.
    He smiled. “Damned dramatic,” he said, almost approvingly. “Hell’s own shakes