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 o
ut 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 set 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.”