Jack stopped talking.
Madeline moved to stand very close to him. She put one hand on his arm. His battle-ready tension told her that he was reliving the scene in his mind. She did not speak. She did not take her hand off his arm. It was the only comfort she could offer in that moment.
After a while Jack started talking again.
“I turned around in the water and finally accepted the reality of what was happening. Victor planned to kill me. But what he hadn’t planned on doing was missing the shot. He had no backup plan. Victor never had a backup plan.”
“Because he was the smartest guy in the room.”
“He started to panic when he realized he had missed the shot. He dropped the spear gun and grabbed his knife. He swam toward me. I went low, trying to get beneath him. And then I switched off my flashlight, thinking it would make me less of a target. Everything went . . . very, very dark.”
“Ingram didn’t have a flashlight?”
“He had one on his belt, but he wasn’t using it because he wanted to have both hands free to take the shot with the spear gun. When he realized he’d missed, all he could think about was coming at me with the knife. When the world went dark, his panic exploded. There is nothing that will kill you faster underwater. Victor did what most divers do when they lose it. He instinctively tried to go up.”
“But you said the guide line was toward the bottom of the cave.”
Jack looked at her. “It was. And that’s what I used to get out of the cave. I wasn’t exactly levelheaded myself at that moment, either. My heart was pounding and I was using up air at a dangerous rate. Once I was outside in open water I realized that Victor had not followed me.”
“You went back in.”
“I couldn’t just . . . leave him there. I kept thinking of his wife and kids. I was still trying to convince myself that maybe it had all been an accident. But by the time I found him he was dead. There was some air left in his tanks, but in his panic he had spit out the regulator and drowned. It happens more often than people realize.”
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“You never told Victor’s family the truth, did you?”
“There didn’t seem to be any point. It was bad enough that he was dead. I didn’t want to add to their pain and grief. And I had absolutely no proof of what had happened in that cave.”
“What about the woman with whom he was having the affair?”
“My fiancée? That didn’t go well, either.”
“Your what?” Madeline stared at him. “Your fiancée was the industrial espionage agent?”
“I know. Doesn’t make me look too bright, does it? When I returned to California I finally took a good, long look at the pattern and I put it all together. Jenny and I had a very short conversation. She took off. Didn’t seem to be any point calling the police because industrial espionage is very hard to prove and companies rarely prosecute, anyway. They don’t want their secrets exposed any more than they already have been.”
“What happened to Jenny?”
“Last I heard she was on the East Coast. Married a guy with serious money.”
Madeline took a deep breath. “So.”
“So? I tell you my big secret and that’s all you’ve got to say?”
She thought about it. “No. What I’m going to say is that I get why you’re gun-shy when it comes to relationships.”
“I am not gun-shy.”
“Yes, you are. Just like me. We’re both afraid of making mistakes. But what I’m thinking is, now that we both know each other’s secrets, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get married.”
She had just stepped off a very high cliff and she knew it.
Jack didn’t say a word for a full sixty seconds. She was aware of the time because she was counting under her breath. One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three . . .
He framed her face in his powerful hands and looked at her with his fierce eyes.
“Did you just ask me to marry you?” he said.
She allowed herself to breathe. “Yes. Do I get an answer?”
“Yes.”
She blinked, bewildered. “What does that mean?”
“It means yes.”
He groaned and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly, as though fearing she might fly away.
“I love you,” he said into her hair. “I’ve loved you from that first day in your office when you tried to fire me.”
“I wasn’t trying to fire you,” she said into his shirt. “I was simply suggesting that the hotel security business might not be a good fit for you and that you ought to pursue other professional opportunities.”