Page 51 of Beneath Still Waters

Her rescuer still held her above the water while struggling with something, then sliced through the rope around her wrists, nicking her palm in the process. Blood curled into the water as she finally took a few strokes on her own to keep herself afloat. She spun and came face-to-face with Carl.

Without his raincoat, and with all his clothes sticking to him, he looked small. Not nearly so frightening as a murderer should be. She paddled toward Carl’s boat, since George had taken theirs, and used the ladder off the back to climb out. Duke met her there, his hands still tied tightly.

Carl wobbled up onto the boat and slowly cut Duke and Kevin loose. “I never meant to be a murderer.” A sob shook his shoulders. “I wanted to help my girl. That’s all. Every time I thought I was done, George wanted one more thing.”

He slowly shook his head and landed on his knees. “You’ve got to believe me. When he tossed her into the water and I heard that scream, it was like something flipped in me. I couldn’t watch that. I couldn’t be a part of that.”

He held up his hands in front of him, wrists together. “Go ahead. Take me in.”

“We need an ambulance to meet us at the dock. You assaulted a federal agent and he’s going to need stitches. In his face,” Kevin said.

“My phone is in the pocket of my slicker. Over there.” He pointed at his pile of clothes abandoned before he’d jumped in the lake after her.

She’d convinced herself he had to have been pushed or prompted in some way, but he’d made the choice. All on his own.

She sat slowly on the deck and waited for the shaking and dizziness to stop. Duke grabbed Carl’s phone and called for an ambulance and police to take Carl into custody, then he lowered to a squat in front of her.

“I don’t want to make a big deal if you don’t want me to, but your neck is still bleeding. So is your hand. I’d like to go through this boat and look for some first aid, if you’ll let me?”

She looked around at the other three men on the boat. Heath still lay knocked unconscious, but thankfully there wasn’t muchblood, even with a head wound. Kevin tended to his friend while Carl sat on his knees with his wrists cuffed in front of him.

“He’s going away for a long time. Isn’t he?” she muttered.

“Maybe. Probably. He likely killed Bailey. He made the same move on Heath. Don’t know if he planned to kill both or accidentally killed Bailey but we’ll have to figure that out.” He rose to his feet and headed inside.

“You believe me, don’t you?” He looked at her, his eyes watery. “I saved you. You believe me. Right?”

His pleas seemed even more pitiful coming from a man who, not fifteen minutes before, had knocked a man clean out. With a vase. “I believe you helped me. Everything else is up for debate.”

His shoulders sagged. “She’s going to be all alone. Bailey’s gone. I’m gone. Who’s going to take care of her now?”

“Monica?”

“Well, yeah.” He didn’t look up.

She wasn’t sure how long she could stand to be on her knees like he was, especially with the wounds to her knee and thigh. Her conscience prickled and she went over to help him to his feet, then to a chair.

“I think her parents will have to look out for her. She made choices in her life, Carl. Did you know Bailey was still paying her this whole time?”

His gaze met hers in an instant. “That’s a lie.”

“I saw one of the payments and I talked to his new girlfriend. She confirmed it, though the money was going to stop when he remarried and left Piper’s Ridge.”

“She told me he’d stopped. She said she had nothing. Couldn’t eat. I did all this because, what kind of man marries a woman fresh out of high school, tells her not to work, leaves her without skills or resources, then abandons her? Who does that?” His volume rose.

“I’m not going to say what he did was right, but neither of us know the whole story and we likely never will,” Ferd said.

Duke tended to her cuts quickly then helped Kevin move Heath to Carl’s boat. Once all of them were seated, Kevin drove the slower vessel back to the dock. A police car and ambulance waited in the small parking lot with a small group of onlookers from Ahab’s Restaurant waiting to see what all the fuss was about.

Ferd couldn’t wait to get off and never see a lake again. She made a beeline for the ambulance without a second thought. While they checked on her and Heath, she watched Duke hand Carl over to one police officer, then talk for a good ten minutes with another.

They had to catch George before he got on a plane and flew back to California, away from ever getting caught. Because other than assaulting her, they had no evidence against him.

Duke finally came over and stood by her feet where she lay on the gurney. “You okay?”

“As much as I can be. With all this, I can’t exactly hide what I’ve been doing. Coupled with the injury to my knee, it doesn’t look like rest.” Helping today would take away any ounce of choice she may have had.

“You’re worried they’ll think you’re taking advantage of them.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could do. I’m afraid if I wrote a letter of thanks to them for letting us use one of their finest, it probably wouldn’t go over any better.”