Children of the Storm

he have been?” Sonya asked.
        “John Hayes,” the bodyguard said.
        Startled, she said, “How do you know?”
        He produced a slip of pink paper, wrinkled and damp. He said, “This is a stub from a motorboat rental service on Guadeloupe. It has his name and home address, but it's been so soaked in seawater that it's nearly unreadable. Still, you can make out the name.”
        She looked but did not touch.
        “Where'd you get it?” she asked.
        He said, “In his trousers pocket.”
        “You touched-that thing?”
        “It was only a corpse.”
        “Still-”
        “I thought there might be identification on it, and there was.” He tucked the slip of paper into his pocket again.
        “Now, we have to face what to do with it.” she said.
        “The body?”
        “Of course, the body.”
        He said, “We leave it there.”
        “For the crabs?”
        “What would you have me do?” he asked. “I could move it off the beach, but the crabs would follow. The only other alternative is to wrap it in a blanket, bring it to the house and dump it into a freezer. Do you think that would make everyone feel better?”
        “Oh God, no!” she said.
        “Then we leave it where we found it.”
        “What if the sea takes it away?”
        He said, with feeling, “Good riddance!”
        “But,” Sonya protested, “isn't it evidence? Isn't it important to show the police what we saw-”
        “John Hayes will be reported missing, by someone-wife, mother, sister, girlfriend. And we'll have this slip of paper, and we'll be able to testify about what we saw out there. That'll be evidence enough.”
        She thought a while. “What was he doing here on Distingue?”
        Saine said, “I would guess that, somehow, he was in cahoots with the man who wants to hurt the kids.”
        “Madmen don't work in pairs!” she said.
        “A point which John Hayes learned too late.”
        “He was killed by whoever's after Alex and Tina?”
        “I think so.”
        Earlier, on the way back to the house, he had asked her not to tell anyone what they'd found until they had a chance to talk about it. Now, she discovered why he felt a need for secrecy.
        He said, “I'm going to ask you to continue to be quiet about this. I don't want anyone to know we saw that body.”
        “Why?”
        “Because I have an ace up my sleeve that our knife-toting friend can't know about. I now have a slight advantage.”
        “How so?”
        She tried to take a sip of coffee but found that her mug was empty.
        “If we can hold everything together until this storm breaks and until someone on the mainland decides we're in some sort of trouble out here, if we can keep the kids safe, then I have a chance of nailing our crazy friend, whoever he is. I can take this slip of paper back to the boat rental place, learn the address that's been washed off, and find out just who John Hayes was-and who he knew. If I'm not getting senile, I believe I'll find that John Hayes was friends with someone on this island, either in Seawatch or Hawk House.”
        “And that someone is our man,” Sonya said.
        “Exactly.”
        “I'll keep it quiet.”
        “Thank you.”
        They sat for a long moment, watching the children playing cards with Bess Dalton.
        Sonya said, “They almost saw-”
        “But didn't.”
        “I scared them with my scream.”
        He said, “I was trying to call out to them too, but I couldn't get any words out. I just stood there moving my mouth, like a ventriloquist's dummy without his master.”
        Sonya looked at the bodyguard as he continued watching the children, and she thought again about the contradictions of his personality. The same man who could coldly search a decomposing corpse's pockets could not find his voice to warn the kids away from that same grisly object! He was in no way an ordinary man-a curious blend of brutality and sensitivity.
        Without knowing why, she asked, “Have you ever been married?”
        He nodded. “Once.”
        “Children?”
        “A son.”
        “How old is he?”
        “He would be eight now.”
        “Would be?”
        “He wasn't a healthy child. He died of heart trouble when he was three, congenital coronary disease.”
        “I'm sorry,” she said.
        “So am I,” he said, watching the