Diamond Bay (4 page)

She'd gotten her wind back, and sitting there in the grass wasn't
going to get anything accomplished. But she was so tired, as if her legs and
arms were weighted down with lead; they were sluggish, and she staggered a
little when she climbed to her feet. Gently she wrapped the quilt around the man,
then positioned herself behind him and slid her hands under his shoulders.
Straining, fighting for every bit of leverage, she raised him to a half-sitting
position, then quickly propped him up on her legs. He started to fall over, and
with a cry Rachel caught him around the chest, looping her arms tightly and
locking her hands together. His head fell forward, as limply as a newborn's.
Joe worried at her side, growling when he couldn't find a place to catch hold
of the quilt.

"It's all right," she panted. "I've got to do it
this way now." She wondered if she was talking to the dog or the man.
Either was ridiculous, but both seemed important.

The steps were at her back. Keeping her legs under her and her
hands tightly locked around the man's chest, Rachel thrust herself backward;
her bottom landed on the first step with a jarring thud, and the edge of the
top step scraped a raw strip down her back, but she'd managed to lift the man a
little. Hot pain seared her back and legs from the strain she was putting on her
muscles. "Oh, God," she whispered, "I can't collapse now. In a
little while I'll rest, but not now."

Grinding her teeth, she got her feet under her again, using the
stronger muscles of her thighs rather than her more vulnerable back muscles.
Once more she lunged up and back, pushing with her legs, hauling the man up
with her. She was sitting on the top step now, and tears of pain and effort
were stinging her eyes. The man's torso was on the steps, his legs still out in
the yard, but if she could get his upper body on the porch the rest would be
easy. She had to do the agonizing maneuver one more time.

She didn't know how she did it, where she found the strength. She
gathered, lunged, pushed. Suddenly her feet went out from under her and she
fell heavily on her back on the wooden porch, the man lying on her legs.
Stunned, she lay there for a moment, staring up at the yellow porch light with
the tiny bugs swarming around it. She could feel her heart pounding wildly
inside her rib cage, hear the wheezing sobs as she tried to suck enough oxygen
into her lungs to meet the demand being made by overworked muscles. His weight
was crushing her legs. But she was lying full-length on the porch, so if he was
lying on her legs, that meant she'd done it. She'd gotten him up the steps!

Groaning, crying, she pushed herself into a sitting position,
though she thought the planks beneath her made a wonderful bed.
It took her a moment to struggle
from beneath his confining weight, and then it was more than she
could do to stand.
She crawled to
the screen door and propped it open, then scrambled back to the man. Just a few
more feet. Inside the front door, angle to the right, then into her bedroom.
Twenty, thirty feet. That was it, all she would ask of herself.

The original method of catching the edge of the quilt and pulling
it seemed like a good idea, and Joe was willing to lend his strength again, but
Rachel had precious little strength herself, and the dog had to do most of the
work. Slowly, laboriously, they inched the man across the porch. She and Joe
couldn't get through the door at the same time, so she went first and knelt to
reach for a new grip on the quilt. Growling, his husky body braced, Joe pulled
back with all his strength, and man and quilt came through the door.

It seemed like a good idea to keep on going while they had him
moving; she angled him toward her bedroom, and a scant minute later he was
lying on the floor beside her bed. Joe released the quilt as soon as she did
and immediately backed away from her, his hackles raised as he reacted to the
unfamiliar confines of a house.

Rachel didn't try to pet him now; she'd already asked so much of
him, trespassed so far past the set boundaries, that any further overtures
would simply be too much. "This way," she said, struggling to her
feet and leading him back to the front door. He darted past her, anxious for
his freedom again, and disappeared into the darkness beyond the porchlight.
Slowly she released the screen door and closed it, slapping at a gnat that had
entered the house.

Methodically, her steps slow and faltering, she locked the front
and back doors and pulled the curtains over the windows. Her bedroom had
old-fashioned Venetian blinds, and she closed them.
That done, the house as secure as she
could make it, she stared down at the naked man sprawled on her bedroom floor.
He needed medical attention, skilled medical attention, but she
didn't dare call a doctor. They were required to report all gunshot wounds to
the police.

There was really only one person who could help her now, one
person she trusted to keep a secret. Going to the kitchen, Rachel dialed Honey
Mayfield, keeping her fingers crossed that some emergency hadn't already called
Honey out. The telephone was picked up on the third ring, and a distinctly
drowsy voice said, "This is Mayfield."

"Honey, this is Rachel. Can you come out?"

"Now?" Honey yawned. "Has something happened to
Joe?"

"No, the animals are fine. But…can you bring your bag? And
put it in a grocery sack or something, so no one can see it."

All traces of drowsiness had left Honey's voice. "Is this a
joke?"

"No. Hurry."

"I'll be there as soon as I can."

Two receivers were hung up simultaneously, and Rachel went back to
the bedroom, where she crouched beside the man. He was still unconscious, and
the handling he had received should have been enough to wake the dead, unless
he had lost so much blood that he was in deep shock and near death himself.
Sharp, piercing anxiety seized her, and she touched his face with trembling hands,
as if she could pass the essence of life to him with her touch. He was warmer
now than he had been, and he was breathing with slow, heavy movements of his
chest. The wound on his shoulder was sullenly oozing blood, and sand clung to
him, even matting his hair, which was still dripping seawater. She tried to
brush some of the sand out of his hair and felt something sticky beneath her
fingers.
Frowning, she
looked at the watery redness that stained her hand; then awareness
dawned.
He had a head injury, as well! And
she had dragged him up that slope, then literally manhandled him up the steps
and onto the porch! The wonder was that she hadn't killed him!

Her heart pounding, she ran to the kitchen and filled her biggest
plastic mixing bowl with warm water, then returned to the bedroom to sit on the
floor beside him. As gently as possible, she washed as much blood and sand out
of his hair as she could, feeling the thick strands come unmatted between her
fingers. Her fingertips found a swelling lump on the right side of his head,
just past the hairline at his temple, and she pushed the hair aside to reveal a
jagged tear in the skin. Not a gunshot wound, though. It was as if he'd hit his
head, or been hit with something. But why was he unconscious now? He had been
swimming when she'd first seen him, so he'd been conscious then, coming in on
the surge of the tide. He hadn't lost consciousness until he was already inside
the mouth of Diamond Bay.

She pressed the cloth to the lump, trying to clean sand out of the
cut. Had he hit his head on one of the huge, jagged rocks that lined the mouth
of the bay? At low tide they were just under the surface of the water and
difficult to avoid unless you knew exactly where they were placed. Knowing what
she did about the bay, Rachel decided that that was exactly what had happened,
and she bit her lip at the thought of dragging the man around the way she had
when he was probably suffering from a concussion. What if her imagination was
running wild with her, and she caused the man's death with her fears and
hesitation? A concussion was serious, and so was a gunshot wound. Oh, God, was
she doing the right thing?
Had he been shot by accident and fallen overboard at night, then lost
his bearings from pain and confusion?
Was
someone frantically searching for him right now?

She stared blindly down at him, her hand moving to touch his
shoulder as if in apology, her fingers stroking lightly over his warm, darkly
tanned skin. What a fool she was! The best thing she could do for this man would
be to call the rescue squad immediately and hope that she hadn't done any
additional damage to him with her rough handling. She started to get to her
feet, to forget her crazy fancies and do the sensible thing, when she realized
that she had been staring at his legs, and that the left one had a knotted
strip of denim tied around it. Denim. He'd had denim tied around his shoulder,
too. Her spine tingled warily, and she left her position by his head to crawl
down to his leg, already afraid of what she would find. She couldn't untie the
knot; it was pulled too tightly, and the water had only tightened it.

She got a pair of scissors out of her sewing basket and neatly
sliced the fabric. The scissors slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers as
she stared down at his thigh, at the ugly wound in the outer muscle. He'd been
shot in the leg, too. She examined his leg almost clinically; there were both
entry and exit wounds, so at least the bullet wasn't still inside him. He
hadn't been so lucky with his shoulder.

No one was shot
twice
by accident. Someone had deliberately
tried to kill him.

"I won't let it happen!" she said fiercely, the sound of
her own voice startling her. She didn't know the man who lay on the floor,
unmoving and unresponsive, but she crouched over him with all the
protectiveness of a lioness for a helpless cub. Until she knew what was going
on, no one was going to get a chance to hurt this man.

Her hands gentle, she began washing him as best she could. His
nudity didn't embarrass her, under the circumstances she felt it would be silly
to flinch from his bare flesh.
He was wounded, helpless; had she walked up on
him sunbathing in the nude, that would have been a different kettle of
fish entirely, but he needed her now, and she wasn't about to let modesty
prevent her from helping him.

She heard the sound of a car coming down her road and got hastily
to her feet. That should be Honey, and though Joe normally wasn't as hostile to
women as he was to men, after the unusual events of the night he might be on
edge and take it out on the vet. Rachel unlocked the front door and opened it,
stepping out on the front porch. She couldn't see Joe, but a low growl issued
from beneath the oleander shrub, and she spoke quietly to him as Honey's car
turned into the driveway.

Honey got out and reached into the back seat for two grocery sacks,
which she clutched to her as she started across the yard. "Thanks for
waiting up," she said clearly. "Aunt Audrey wants you to look at
these quilting squares for your shops."

"Come on in," Rachel invited, holding open the screen
door. Joe growled again as Honey walked up the steps, but remained beneath the
oleander.

Honey sat the two grocery sacks on the floor and watched as Rachel
carefully locked the front door again. "What's going on?" she
demanded, planting her strong, freckled fists on her hips. "Why am I
disguising my bag as quilting squares?"

"In here," Rachel said, leading the way to her bedroom.
He still wasn't moving, except for the regular motion of his chest as he
breathed. "He's been shot," she said, going down on her knees beside
him.

The healthy color washed out of Honey's face, leaving her freckles
as bright spots on her nose and cheekbones. "My God, what's going on here?
Who is he? Have you called the sheriff? Who shot him?"

"I don't know, to answer three of those questions,"
Rachel said tensely, not looking at Honey. She kept her eyes trained on the
man's face, willing him to open his eyes, wishing he could give her the answers
to the questions Honey had asked. "And I'm not going to call the
sheriff."

"What do you mean, you're not going to call?" Honey
fairly shouted, shaken out of her usual calm capability by the sight of a naked
man on Rachel's bedroom floor. "Did
you
shoot him?"

"Of course not! He washed up on the beach!"

"All the more reason to call the sheriff!"

"I
can't
!
Rachel lifted her head, her eyes
fierce and strangely calm. "I can't risk his life that way."

"Have you lost your sense of reason? He needs a doctor, and
the sheriff needs to investigate why he was shot! He could be an escaped felon,
or a drug runner. Anything!"

"I know that." Rachel drew a deep breath. "But the
shape he's in, I don't think I'm taking that much of a risk. He's helpless. And
if things aren't that…cut and dried…he wouldn't stand a chance in a hospital
where someone could get to him."

Honey put her hand to her head. "I don't understand what
you're talking about," she said wearily. "What do you mean, 'cut and
dried'? And why do you think someone would try to get to him? To finish the job
they started?"

"Yes."

"Then it's a job for the sheriff!"