Shadow's Lady (A Pajaro Bay Cozy Mystery + Sweet Romance) (5 page)

His black hair glistened with raindrops.

She leaned down and shouted right into his face: "Move it! NOW!"

Amazingly, it worked. He pulled himself to his feet—or, rather, to his foot, with the bad leg bent so it didn't touch the ground.

"Which way, Sarge?" he asked meekly, but with a twinkle in his eye.

She ignored the fact that he was mocking her, and the fact that he looked even more handsome all tousled and rain-soaked, and simply pointed toward the path up the hill.

"We're going that way. Come on." She wrapped one arm around him—well, partway around him; this guy was huge—and they set off.

One hop, and his weight nearly knocked her to the ground.

She must have grunted in pain, because he immediately stopped.

"No way," he said in that gravelly whisper. "I'll crush you."

"Shut up and hop," she ordered.

She could feel his body shivering violently, but he moved forward. Another hop. This time she gritted her teeth and no sound escaped her lips.

He stopped. "Sweetheart, I'm six-foot-three and weigh 180. You can't be much more than half my size—"

"—this is not the time to discuss my weight."

"But you can't carry me."

"I won't have to if you shut up and hop."

He hopped.

By the time they got to the base of the sandstone cliff the rain was pouring down steadily and the wind was whistling through the rocks with a cry like one of her imaginary ghosts.

His wetsuit was slippery and it was hard for her to prop him up. Both of them were panting.

"Rest," he said.

"One minute," she told him. "But no sitting down."

He placed both hands against the sandstone wall in front of him and dropped his head.

She pulled back her sleeve to look at her watch. "Okay, one minute starts now."

He glanced at her. "You're timing me?"

"45 more seconds," she responded, trying to look stern. If he sat down she'd never get him up again.

"There," she said when the secondhand had completed its circle. "Now we're ready to go on."

He had no response to that.

She grabbed his wrist. It didn't take a medical degree to know his pulse was beating too quickly. He was shaking uncontrollably now.

She gave him one more minute, then felt his forehead. Clammy. Sweaty. Pain was written all over his face.

Those deep brown eyes looked worriedly at her. "Are you okay?" he asked. "You look exhausted."

She was shocked by his concern. The guy was half-dead and he was thinking about how she felt? She probably did look awful. Her usual post-seizure headache roared in her ears, and she wasn't a hundred-percent sure she wouldn't throw up on him before they got through this.

She looked him in the eye. "We don't have a choice. You've got to climb the path up the cliff. I can help, but I can't do it for you."

"Lori, you are a very sweet girl," he said, completely irrelevantly.

"I know," she said. She wrapped her arm around him again. "Now get moving."

Somehow he did it, hopping, scrambling, clinging to exposed tree roots. Sometimes she grabbed his arm and pulled him up with all her strength. Sometimes she got behind him and pushed till her legs ached.

Finally, all six-foot-three, 180 pounds of him was at the top of the hill. He collapsed on the muddy ground while she sprawled next to him. He clung to her hand as if he didn't want to let go.

The rain poured down on them unrelentingly. Far off, she heard the rumble of thunder. It was getting closer. They were too exposed out here. They had to get inside before the lightning reached the island.

She sat up, disentangling her hand from his. She brushed the hair back from his face. He looked terrible—skin blanched pale beneath his tan, pulse beating wildly in his throat. Had she done the right thing, forcing him to climb the cliff? It didn't matter; it was too late to undo the damage now.

His dark, rain-soaked lashes fluttered against his face as if he hadn't the strength to open his eyes. "Shhh," she whispered. "Rest just a bit longer."

She leaned over him, sheltering him from the downpour. The raindrops glistened on his face. She brushed them away from his full lips that were tinged a frightening blue with cold, from the stubble of dark beard at his cheek. Surfing. What had possessed him to go surfing in this weather?

She realized to her surprise that she was cradling one of those gorgeous dumb jocks she had mooned over in high school. The kind of guy who made her tingle all over every time he passed her in the hall; the kind of guy who was so busy fighting off bubbly cheerleaders he never noticed she was alive.

She had always comforted herself with the thought that guys like that ended up pot-bellied has-beens by the time they were 30.

This one—acres of rock-hard muscle—appeared to buck that stereotype.

She brushed the raindrops from his face with her sweatshirt sleeve. The thunder was louder now.

His eyes opened.

"Only a few more yards," she said gently. "It's all flat from here. But we have to get out of the storm."

Silently he gathered himself up and struggled to stand. He leaned heavily against her, apparently exhausted beyond any attempt at walking on his own.

"Just a few more yards," she repeated. "This way."

She turned to face the house and noticed to her surprise that the "dog" was back. Odd how even from this angle yards away from the lighthouse the ghostly image could still be seen. Also odd that the illusion was visible in this dull, gray downpour when before it had appeared as a reflection in the semi-darkness before the dawn.

She looked away from the dog, down at the ground, not wanting a repeat of her last apparition-induced seizure.

"Grrrr."

Grrrr?
She heard the distinctively canine growl and realized she had completely forgotten about the howl that had driven her outside in the first place. Ghosts, particularly fictional ghosts created by tricks of light, did not make noise.

She looked up to find herself staring at, not a ghost, not even a dog, but what could only be a man-eating wolf, huge and shaggy black, with a menacing expression in its deadly black eyes.

"Grrrr," it said again, then bounded straight toward them.

"Look out!" Lori tried to push the injured man behind her, to protect him from the attacking creature.

But the dog ran past her to jump up on the man.

The man hugged the big beast to him, looking like he was about to cry with relief. "I thought you were drowned," he whispered into the dog's fur. The canine licked his face, as if to say, "I thought you were, too."

This was getting weirder by the minute.

Seeing it up close she did have to admit that it was just a normal, if large, pet dog, and not a wild wolf. And maybe it wasn't as evil as it had first appeared. It frolicked around in the mud, barking happily, and feigning leaps at the man as if begging to play. And the man was actually grinning. He was swaying dangerously in a losing effort to stay upright, and he was shaking like a leaf, but he was grinning.

The beast came toward her and she backed up. "Keep it away from me!"

He frowned. "He's not going to hurt you. He's a really friendly dog."

"I don't like animals," she said.

He started to ask about that, but she stopped him. "Not now. I hate to break up this reunion," she said, trying to slow the pounding of her heart, "but the lightning's getting closer, and you've got another ten yards to hop."

•••

Ophelia was waiting when they entered the kitchen. Her expression upon seeing Lori and the semi-conscious, wetsuit-clad man was one of pure shock. When the dog trotted through the door in their wake and sat down in the middle of the floor Lori swore Ophie's jaw actually dropped open.

"I told you so," Lori told the cat.

Ophelia, puffed up into a fluffy gray fuzzball, hissed in response.

Lori plopped the man down unceremoniously on the floor next to the Aga. The dog sprawled next to him with a sigh of relief, then promptly started snoring.

The cat expressed her displeasure at this turn of events with a growl louder than the thunder outside, then shot past them and headed for a hiding place under a chair in the adjoining sitting room. She crouched there and glared at them, growling all the while. "Knock it off, Ophie," Lori said.

"Ophie?" the man whispered.

"Her name's Ophelia. And like her namesake, she's gone insane."

Lori, halfway to the kitchen sink, could have sworn the man muttered something like "How long hath she been thus?" But that was highly unlikely, since dumb jocks didn't generally quote
Hamlet
from memory.

It was done. He was inside, out of the drenching, chilling storm, and he was safe. Her whole body was shaking, she was soaked with as much sweat as rain, and her head throbbed like a really lousy dancer was auditioning on her cerebral cortex. But her anonymous pirate was alive. She splashed cold water on her face and hair, then toweled off with one of Aunt Zee's vintage royal family tea towels, leaving a swipe of mud across Queen Elizabeth's face.

The man hadn't moved.

"We'll have the Coast Guard here in a few minutes," she said reassuringly.

She started to walk past where he lay on the floor, but he grabbed her leg with that iron grip of his. "Blanket?" he asked.

"In a minute," she answered gently. "I'm going to call the Coast Guard. It might take them some time to get here in this weather."

He wouldn't let go of her leg. That grip of his was awful. She couldn't move. "You have to let go," she said as patiently as she could. She bent down to try to pry off his fingers, but she couldn't. He stared up at her.

"Blanket, please."

"Fine," she said. "I'll get you a blanket first."

He let go of her arm and she went to her bedroom to fetch the blanket.

•••

He had to get up. He grabbed the chrome handle on the front of the Aga and used it to haul himself to a standing position.

Move. Fast. Now.

Shadowfax got up to follow him and he gave the hand signal for down and stay. The dog lay back down with a grumble.

It was agony to leave that warm stove, but he had no time to think about it.
Move, DiPietro. Move or die.

He remembered from an elementary school tour that the lighthouse tower was down the left hallway. Hopping as quickly and as quietly as he could, he made his way there. The girl had gone farther down the hall, to the bedrooms. He hoped it took her some time to get back, because he had to race her up the lighthouse tower, and he wasn't sure he had it in him to do it.

He stood on the slate floor at the base of the stairs, trying to convince his left leg to cooperate. The low-wattage lights spaced every twenty feet or so up the thick stone tower made it difficult to see how far it was to the top. But he knew how far. Every school kid in Pajaro Bay knew. 136 steps. 115 feet tall.

136 black iron steps, spaced just far enough apart to make hopping up them difficult. And about halfway up the tower was the little communications room. That was where the marine radio would be, their only remaining lifeline to the outside world.

He hopped onto the bottom step. It made a rattle that echoed in the tower. "One," he whispered.

His jaw ached from from what must have been hours of tooth-chattering cold. And the tower seemed even colder than outside, its stone walls serving as a perfect funnel for the wind to whistle in from some gap far above.

Every time the lightning flashed through the windows—and it seemed to be flashing every few seconds now—the glossy black gleam of the iron railing stood out in the semi-darkness above him, its spiral winding upward out of sight.

He took the next step. "Two."

Only about 65 more to go. Piece of cake.

•••

He had disappeared. The mean-looking dog was still there, lying on the floor by the Aga and looking up at her reproachfully. But the man had disappeared. Now there was only a puddle where he had lain on the kitchen floor.

It made no sense. He had been almost unconscious, yet in two minutes he'd somehow managed to disappear to... where?

She dropped the blanket she was carrying and ran down the hall to the pantry. She threw open the outside door. A flash met her, followed almost instantly by a crack of thunder that made her ears ring.

She slammed the door shut. He couldn't have gone back out there. Where was he?

"Hello?" she called tentatively. Then tried again, loud enough to be heard over the roaring outside. No response. Had he passed out somewhere? But where?

She made her way through the pantry, down the hall, past the lighthouse tower to the sleeping quarters. Both bedrooms were empty, her bedroom with its big brass bed that kept calling to her aching body to lie down, and the other, empty and cold with nothing in it but some packing crates.

The door to the hall bathroom was shut. She knocked, then opened it. Empty. She called out again, louder this time, but heard nothing in response except a whine from the dog in the kitchen.

She went back there. "So where did he go?" she asked the dog.

He just looked at her.

"Well, do something, dog. Go find him or something."

The dog just lay there and looked at her.

"You're no Lassie," she said. "She wouldn't just lie there like a lump. Get up!" She motioned at the dog to move and it immediately bounded to his feet.

She waved her arm in an arc. "Where is he?" she asked, and the dog ran purposefully past her. "That's more like it."

She followed.

The dog headed down the hall and turned left without hesitation.

He couldn't have gone back outside. He couldn't be that crazy. She skirted the tower stairs and made for the storm porch, but the dog didn't go that way. He went to the base of the tower stairs and barked.

The dog bounded up the stairs two at a time, quickly disappearing from view. "Stop it!" she said with as much authority as she could. "Find your master, you dumb dog."

But the dog ignored her.

Then she heard it. A soft clunk on the iron stairs that didn't sound like the dog. A grunt of effort, far above. It had to be him. But what was he doing all the way up there by himself?

She tried to follow at the dog's pace, but the exhaustion was beginning to wear her down, and she could feel the heaviness in her thighs and calves as she struggled up the circular staircase.

She started to get dizzy as the stairs wound around and around, and she had to stop. She rested her head against the outer stone wall of the tower for a minute. "Are you up there?" she called, to him, to the dog, to anybody. There was no answer. But it had to be him up there. So once she caught her breath she kept going.

Finally she got to the communication room. It wasn't really a room, just a wide spot, a landing really, where the original scarred oak desk still stood on the wooden floor, with nothing on it but the brand-new marine radio Aunt Zee had purchased in time for her arrival on the island.

Except the radio wasn't there.

A tangle of broken wires was all that remained on the desk.

Around the far bend of the landing, the man stood in the dark, swaying slightly. The dog sat at his feet, whining.

The radio was in the man's hands, and his hands were high over his head as he leaned over the railing and looked down into the stairwell.

She ran to him.

"Stop!" she shouted, and reached out.

He let go, and her final sight of the radio was it passing inches from her open palms, falling straight down the shaft, its wires streaming out behind it, almost as if they were trying to keep from falling too.

Then a second later, she heard the sickening smash of electronics against the slate floor.

She turned around and slugged him in the stomach as hard as she could.

He collapsed in a heap at her feet. The dog whined and licked his face.

She got down on her knees in front of him and shook his shoulders. It was like shaking granite. "Why?"