Authors: Nevada Barr
Again the bell rang.
Definitely the lift bell.
The lift bell rang when it was called down to the jetty, and it rang when it was sent—or called—to the top of the cliff. When they’d retired for the night, it had been at the top of the cliff. Two bells; somebody had called the lift down, gotten on, then sent it up. That somebody was now on the island.
In the wee hours.
“Damn,” Heath muttered. Wake E? Call Gwen? Flash an SOS to the mainland? “Why aren’t you barking?” she suddenly demanded of Wily. He swept his tail over the wide boards of the floor.
Since Wily wasn’t alarmed, Heath felt safe enough to see what was happening before she roused the house. The last thing she wanted was to make this ivory tower—such as it was—feel unsafe when Elizabeth was experiencing just how unsafe most of the world was.
A metal bar on legs, like a spare clothing rack, but narrower and much stronger, stood over the head of the bed. One of Leah’s designs, it was lightweight, stable, and easily broken down into a civilized-sized carrying package. It was a great help when Heath overnighted away from home.
Using the bar, she hoisted herself upright, then pushed her legs free of the covers and the mattress. From there it was a fairly easy swing into Robo-butt, parked next to the bed. In one of Robo-butt’s saddlebags, among other things, was a small Maglight. Heath took it out, clicked the switch a couple of times. Satisfied the batteries hadn’t gone dead, she dropped it into her lap.
Rolling toward the long tunnel through the tower wall of the lighthouse, she asked, “Coming, Wily?”
The steady pad-pad of his paws on the flooring behind her was reassuring.
Though there was no moon, the arc-shaped main room of the tower, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, was surprisingly light. The sea seemed to maximize ambient light, catching the stars on the whitecaps. The granite Maine was built on had that same reflective quality, thousands of tiny facets polished by the centuries until they shone like mirrors.
Heath twisted the dead bolt, then shoved open the door with the foot of her wheelchair. Still showing no signs of alarm, Wily trotted out in front of her onto the apron of granite. Warily, she rolled after him. Halfway across the natural patio the lift platform came into view. A pile of pale stuff lay on it.
Wily trotted toward it.
“Wait,” Heath called, afraid whatever had been sent up at this ungodly hour was dangerous, poisonous, or vile in some other way.
Wily ignored her, stepped delicately from the landing onto the platform, sniffed the pile, and whined. Heath clicked on the tiny flashlight, shoved the butt end into her mouth, and rolled slowly toward the dog and his catch.
It looked like a mess of fish caught in a net. Another gift from the sea provided by Gwen’s beau? Wouldn’t fish be nasty after even a few hours lying about? Heath rolled nearer. Saliva drooled down her chin. Since she needed both hands to roll in a straight line, she ignored it. Wily wouldn’t mind. He’d been known to drool a time or two in his life.
The dog turned in a tight circle, sat down, threw his head back, and howled.
It wasn’t a net of dead fish. It was a dead woman. She lay on one shoulder. Both arms were stretched above her head, the wrists tied to one of the rings used to secure cargo to the lift floor. She was naked but for one boot and the wild netting of red and silver hair.
Anna.
For a heartbeat, Heath denied it was she. Anna didn’t lose, didn’t die, didn’t quit. Anna wasn’t beaten and trussed and delivered like the morning paper. If Anna wasn’t invincible, what chance did ordinary people have?
Reality snapped back.
“Gwen! Elizabeth!” Heath shouted, the Maglight falling from her jaws to her lap. She jerked the brass whistle free of the neck of her pajama top, put it to her lips, and blew for all she was worth, three piercing blasts.
“Oh my God, Anna!” She rolled until one of Robo-butt’s wheels was on the lift. Having put the brakes on, she levered herself out and slid down next to the body of her friend. The Maglight rolled onto the lift platform to lodge against Anna’s naked breast, the light shining ghoulishly up beneath her chin.
Heath laid a hand on Anna’s bare shoulder. The skin was ice cold and felt firmer than it should. “No, no, no,” Heath was whispering. “Gwen!” she shouted again. Gwen was a doctor. Gwen would make it okay.
“Anna,” Heath said. “Can you hear me? You’re going to be just fine. Fine and dandy, damn you.” As Heath murmured in a kind, reassuring voice, a voice designed to bring kittens out from under houses and rangers back from the dead, she lifted the hair from Anna’s face and neck. A mass of it was pasted to her back with blood. Blood showed dark on her butt and the heel of her left foot.
“What have you been up to?” Heath asked as she felt for the carotid pulse. “You’re alive,” she said, more for Anna than because she was positive the weak flutter against the pads of her index and middle fingers was blood being pumped through veins.
“What is it?”
Heath turned to see Gwen, tying a robe around her, trotting toward where she sat with Anna. E, in tank top and pajama bottoms, followed close behind, her small narrow feet silent against the rock.
“Move aside,” Gwen said the moment she identified the incident as medical. “Elizabeth, run for blankets.”
As Gwen fell to her knees beside Anna, Heath wormed herself into a position where she could attend to the binding around Anna’s wrists. The ties were cut lengths of yellow line, the kind used in boats. They weren’t tied tightly. Circulation wasn’t compromised, and had Anna been conscious, she could easily have escaped the bonds. Balancing as best she could on her hind end, Heath untied Anna’s wrists and began massaging her cold limp hands.
“She has a pulse,” Gwen said, “but it is weak and too slow.” Heath said nothing. Elizabeth was sprinting from the house with an armload of blankets. Gwen was running her hands over Anna’s body, palpating for injuries, breaks, and bruises.
Elizabeth dumped three down comforters onto the ground. Heath pulled one over and began covering Anna.
Gwen sat back on her knees. “Nothing I can find. Hypothermic probably. Contusions on back, buttocks, and right heel. One lump above her left temple. That might account for the unconsciousness, but it could be any number of things. We have to get her inside and get her warmed up, then get her to a hospital as soon as possible.”
“She’s awake,” Elizabeth whispered.
Heath leaned down so she could see Anna’s eyes. They were half open.
“Hi,” Anna said in a voice as creaky as a rusted gate hinge.
The eyes drifted closed again.
“That was informative,” Heath growled. Seeing Anna helpless frightened her. Heath had always been a person who turned fear into anger. At the moment, she was furious and terrified. Laserlike heat burned inside her skull. Heath half believed that if she ever saw whoever did this to Anna, she could flay him using just her eyes.
For a quarter of an hour there was no talking. A comforter was ruined as the three of them dragged Anna in from the lift. Gently, they hoisted her up onto the couch, then packed down quilts around her naked body. Without being told to, Elizabeth found heating pads in one of the closets.
With a last look at Anna, she slipped into the kitchen, to microwave the pads and boil water for hot drinks, Heath assumed. While Gwen was Velcroing a blood pressure cuff around Anna’s upper arm, Heath was searching the contacts list on her phone for Peter Barnes’s home number.
The silence was broken by Anna.
“Stop,” she croaked.
“Hey!” Heath said with relief as she put the phone to her ear.
“No calls. Not yet,” Anna managed, and, “Help me up.”
Sitting up was perhaps not the best of ideas, but both Gwen and Heath had known Anna too long to think telling her to stay still would be efficacious. Gwen left the pump bulb on the cuff dangling to put an arm around Anna’s shoulders, helping her into a semisitting position against the pillows piled on the arm of the sofa.
“You need to go to the hospital,” Gwen said as Heath was asking, “What happened?”
Anna clutched the sides of her head as if the two soft voices were a cacophony. “What happened,” she echoed. “Before you … Tell me what happened. I’m so cold.”
With use, her voice was normalizing, but the words were slightly blurred—not the slur of a drunk so much as the drawl of a person from a very, very deep South.
“A man said he thought I was a lobster,” Anna mumbled, shaking her head. “No. That can’t be right. Yes. He thought I was a lobster. Said he thought I was … And now I’m here.” She dropped her hands to her lap and looked hard first at Gwen, then at Heath.
“What are you guys doing here?” she asked with a certain petulance.
“We heard the lift bell,” Heath told her. “Wily and I found you on the platform.”
Heath watched, letting the information sink in through whatever was clouding Anna’s perception. Anna’s eyes roved the room as if to see where she’d washed up. “Boar,” she said finally. Heath, Gwen, and Elizabeth, drawn in from the kitchen by Anna’s voice, nodded like bobblehead dolls. Gwen took two heating pads from E. Having peeled back the blankets, she began arranging them along Anna’s ribs.
Anna watched her for a long moment. “I’m naked,” she observed.
“That’s how we found you. Wearing only one boot. That one.” Heath pointed to the sodden cordovan-colored boot standing solitary watch on the cold hearth.
“E, would you please make Anna a cup of tea, real warm but not hot, lots of sugar,” Gwen said.
“No sugar,” Anna said as E turned to go.
Gwen tilted her chin at her great-niece. Anna would be getting sugar.
“Do you remember anything?” Heath asked.
Anna thought. Heath waited, her fingers drumming lightly against the face of her phone, itching to call for help. “May I call Superintendent Barnes now?” Heath asked.
“Not yet. I…” Anna’s voice faded out. Her train of thought had evidently derailed. “Let me figure out what happed first,” she said, finding her way back.
Had Anna not been showing signs of returning life—if not sanity—and Gwen not been a doctor, Heath would have made the call regardless of Anna’s protestations. As it was, Anna seemed to be out of danger.
Danger of what, evidently not even Anna knew.
Anna was awake. A dozen times before, she’d thought she was awake, only to slip back into nightmares until she could no longer tell what was real, what had happened, and what was only a dream.
Only a dream.
There was no “only” about the dreams that pulled her down. They were a force as powerful as any she had encountered. They followed her into the waking world and threatened to drag her back.
“I am awake,” she said. Her voice creaked. Her tongue was as stiff and dry as weathered wood. If taste was any indication, weathered wood from the bottom rail of an old pigsty.
“You’re awake,” a kind voice agreed. “And alive.”
Anna rolled her eyes, eyeballs scratching against lids that felt packed with sand. “We’ll see,” she rasped. Heath was bent over her, a huge annoying smile on her face. “I feel like shit. My face hurts.”
“You’re hungover,” Heath said, still grinning like a fool. “Your head got a hard whack, but it isn’t broken, according to Aunt Gwen.”
Anna reached up with shaking fingers and felt above her eye. There was a lump the size of a walnut, and tender to the touch. Not broken; that was good news. At least not broken on the outside. The gray matter inside of her skull felt as if it had been scrambled like eggs. Lying down was disorienting, and she struggled to sit up. The room spun. Her stomach lurched into her throat. A hammer wielded by an invisible hand slammed into her left temple.
“Do you want to sit up?” Heath asked.
“Of course I want to sit up!” Anna grumbled. “Do you think I’m flopping around because I like looking like a landed fish?”
“Somebody got up on the wrong side of the ocean today.”
Elizabeth was perched on the end of the couch where Anna lay. Anna tried to glare at her, as Heath, more trouble than help, worked to get her into a seated position without falling out of her wheelchair.
“E!” Heath said. Rising smoothly, Elizabeth trotted around the back of the sofa. Between the two of them, Anna was shoved and shored up into a sitting position.
“Damn, but I feel like shit,” Anna said as bile rose up her gorge. “I’m going to be sick.” Heath bobbed out of her line of sight, then bobbed back up again, a bowl in her hand.
“Gwen said you might be,” she said, putting the bowl between Anna’s hands.
Anna retched into the bowl, spewing up thin acid and stinking chunks.
“Done?” Heath asked gently.
“Don’t be so nice,” Anna said. Nice made tears threaten, and Anna was too sick to cry.
Heath smiled. “Take this, would you, E?”
“Eeeeew,” Elizabeth grimaced as she removed the mess from Anna’s lap.
“How long was I asleep?” Anna asked.
“Half the day,” Heath said. “Gwen thought rest was the best thing for you. She gave you an antibiotic, but we didn’t try and clean or dress your wounds.”
“I have wounds?” Anna asked, surprised. When every inch of one’s body hurt, it was hard to tell.
Elizabeth was back on her perch. “One of your heels is all scraped up, and your bottom has major road rash.”
An image of her booted toes, seen down the length of her naked body, bouncing along black asphalt flashed through Anna’s mind.
“I was dragged,” she said, more to herself than them.
A cackle of questions battered in stereo. “By who? Where? Why? Do you remember? Dragged?”
Anna ignored them. Her skin was too tight, her hair stiff and matted; thinking was difficult. Poison pervaded her being. She was sick unto her bones.
“I need a shower,” she said softly. Then, raising her head, she looked into Heath’s concerned face. “A shower.”
Heath and Elizabeth exchanged glances. Anna glowered. “Help her with a shower, E,” Heath said finally.
“I don’t need any help.” Anna stood up, tottered, then fell back on the couch. For a moment she sat blinking stupidly as resistance drained away. “That would be good, E,” she said with moderate civility. “Thank you.”