And he wanted her back.
Ice filling his veins, he somehow made it to the rain-lashed terrace, his eyes searching out the familiar black outline of rock against the clouds and the storm tossed sea. But there was no missing it. Not today, even on the darkest night, no missing that other cloud that rose unnaturally from the other side of the island.
A single plume of smoke.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT HAD taken every shred of every ounce of pulling rank that Rafe could find, every firm promise that the Beast of Iseo was a myth and that the weather was their worst enemy, but finally he’d convinced the Guardia Costiera that he was going with them. Rain lashed his face, his hair was probably wetter than the sea right now, but he felt nothing. Nothing but this great yawning pit that had opened up inside him.
He’d sent her away. Damn well told her to get out, and she’d done exactly what he’d wanted.
What he’d thought he’d wanted.
He must have been insane! Cursed with some kind of madness, because right now the thing he wanted most in the world, the thing he wanted more than anything, was the one thing he’d told her he didn’t want.
Her love.
Because that would mean she was alive.
How could he have let her go?
How could he have sent her into the darkness, crying and distressed? And the yawning hole in his gut snapped shut, catching him in the inescapable truth.
He was his father all over again.
Casting aside her love. Telling her it was unwanted. And in trying to protect himself he’d damaged himself even more. By lashing out at the one person who could show him otherwise. Who could show him how to love.
Rafe looked from the boat, his eyes always on the slick black rock, searching out any detail, anything out of place. The plume of smoke was long gone, but if there had been smoke, then the helicopter must be there, somewhere. For now that was all he would focus on. And if the helicopter was there, then so too was Sienna.
He would find her. And then he would tell her what had been so glaringly obvious the moment he’d known she’d gone, that he wanted to change places with her and smash himself into the rock in her place.
He was such a fool.
The cruiser rounded the rock, the beams from its powerful lights doing the best job they could to cut through the rain and illuminate the shore, every eye on board not concentrating on keeping the boat from the rocks, but searching for any scrap of evidence of the helicopter’s position.
And then there was a glint of white where there should be none, and a cry went up to launch a dinghy. Rafe pushed his way to the front. ‘I’m going,’ he said.
Strange that she should feel cold. The thought came from nowhere, a kind of hazy realization that it was summer, that she shouldn’t feel cold. It was wrong.
Sienna tried to move, but something was pinning her in her seat, something that kept groaning and waking her up, when all she wanted to do was sleep. It groaned again, the sound vaguely human.
Randall.
He lay slumped against her, sharing the scent of his fresh kill, and she remembered where she was, a helicopter down on Iseo’s Pyramid, and laughter bubbled out of some untapped place.
She’d landed a helicopter on Iseo’s damned Pyramid with the ugliest landing in history. But they were alive! At least for now, until that damned Beast found them.
She reached a hand for the radio, but her wrist screamed out in pain and she pulled it back, sinking back once more into grateful oblivion.
Inch by inch, with one coastguard hanging over the edge to check for rocks that might slice the dinghy’s shell to shreds, the boat had made it to the tiny sandy beach. To Rafe it had been an eternity. An eternity of waiting. An eternity of wondering.
And now that they were finally here, was it already too late?
His feet were amongst the first to splash into the water’s edge, the waves still surging in, sucking at his calves with ferocity. But then he was running. Splashing through the shallows and running for the unnatural egg-shaped object, its blades angled askew, the lighting from torches showing how they’d decimated the shrubs and bushes as the chopper had come down.
He reached the passenger door a scant second before the man behind him. He pulled at the latch, heaved it with all his might when it wouldn’t come, and wrenched it open.
And there she sat. Sleeping.
Pray God, she was sleeping!
‘Sienna!’
Her eyelids flickered open with the play of torchlight on her face, and he breathed out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. She looked up at him, confused. ‘I knew the Beast would come,’ she mumbled, before slipping back into unconsciousness.
A doctor pushed his way in front of him, and he gave him room, while another worked on the pilot alongside. Rafe stood back then, the angry sea sucking around his ankles, the shadow of the rock looming high above.