Free Color Him Dead by Charles Runyon Page A

aren’t finished … are we?
    He made a shallow dive into a wave and came up swimming. He disappeared around the rock without looking back.
    She fell onto the sand and tried to cry, but her emotions were exhausted. After a time she climbed to the top of the rock. She saw his snorkel bobbing in the water a hundred yards away. He was a strong swimmer. She remembered his heavy arms, his wide, deep chest, and all his burning, bitter passion. God, how would it feel to have all that inside her?
    A flash of white drew her eye to the tower. Doxie stood there with his binoculars; not even in the middle of the ocean could she escape those bulging eyes.
Look away, Doxie-lamb, and may you die of frustration.
She took off her halter and shorts and walked to the edge of the rock. She poised with her arms above her head, then plunged into the swelling sea. It felt cool against her fevered flesh.
    Drew pulled himself through the water and looked down through the mask. He hoped he’d see something to fight, something on which he could release his frustrated readiness to kill.
    But the purple depths were empty; the gun pressed against his belly like an overdue fetus waiting to be born.
    At first he had thought she was lying, for it was logical that she’d want to change her identity after the murder. But if she’d feigned amnesia, why take it back only two years? Why not ten? No, she really believed she had lived the genteel life on a Texas ranch, with a genteel father and mother. And she had the documents to prove it. Of course, her current husband could have arranged that; he had the money and the opportunity, but what was his motive? To protect her?
    It was too much to think about now. He was sure of only three things: that she was the Edith who had destroyed him, that her amnesia was real and not feigned, and that he had no heart for revenge against a mindless woman.
    But he was sure as hell not finished with her.
    He dragged himself onto the pebbled beach of Barrington’s Isle two hundred yards from where he’d left his crutch. He lay for a moment catching his breath, then began crawling across the stones, thankful that it was growing dusk and nobody could see him.
    The crutch wasn’t where he’d left it. Puzzled, he pulled himself up and leaned against a boulder, searching.
    “Is this what you’re looking for?”
    Drew wheeled and saw the man in white riding pants standing just outside the tall grass. He was holding the crutch in his right hand, and his left hand was twitching against his leg. Drew felt his muscles tense: So this is Doxie, the man Leta feared and Edith despised. He didn’t look so tough.
    Suddenly Doxie threw the crutch. It clattered on the rocks in front of Drew.
    “There. Use it to hobble off this island.”
    Drew bent over, picked it up and settled it on his arm. “Thanks. It’ll come in handy when I get ready to leave.”
    “Now.”
    “I’m not ready.”
    Doxie smiled as though he found the remark extremely gratifying.
    “My name is Eudoxie,” he said. “If that means nothing to you, then I am willing to leave it that way. I could tell you that I am Barrington’s manager and have a right to throw you off the island. But I don’t want that to influence you. I can tell you also that within three hours I could have a squad of policemen here with warrants charging you with trespassing. But I don’t intend to call the police. I could intimidate you with the gun, but—” he jerked the clip from his belt and dropped the gun at his feet—“I discard it. Now you will leave because I tell you to leave. Let that be reason enough.”
    Drew was puzzled by Doxie. He spoke with the arrogance of a man with a secret weapon. The gun was gone; perhaps he had a knife. If so, he wasn’t worried. A knife wasn’t as good a hand-to-hand weapon as many amateurs believed. A surprise weapon, yes, for an intermediate distance, yes, and against another knife-fighter, yes. But as a weapon of intimidation, against a man