Asking For It (3 page)

Above all else, safety.

For two weeks of their lives, Kate made sure these boys, all from families below the poverty line, felt safe. Hopefully they would feel safe enough to learn their true potential in life.

"Now you've got to talk to
him
," Strangler demanded, pointing to Name-caller.

"You're right." Kate suppressed a sigh. She had to talk to Name-caller, as well as put out a few other fires she saw starting at the long tables set under the high, open-raftered ceiling of the dining hall.

Not that Kate minded putting out the fires. In fact, she'd be darn glad if she had a chance to keep putting them out after tomorrow. There were rules about summer camps, certain criteria that had to be met — and as of four o'clock this afternoon when her campers had arrived on the bus from central L.A., she'd been violating a big one: camper to counselor ratio.

As if he could hear her thoughts, Arnie Meadowlark, the camp caretaker, raised a steel-gray eyebrow. Seated with a dozen boys at a table across the room, he seemed to ask,
What are you going to do
?

Kate ignored the silent question, one the ever-practical Arnie had already asked out loud when she'd gotten the sheepish phone call yesterday from the hospital, the phone call that threatened to ruin her last two-week session of the summer. Now she determinedly stalked toward the table where Name-caller was seated. But as soon as Kate concluded that interesting conversation, Arnie strolled up beside her.

"'Evening, Kate." His voice was a smooth drawl while his eyes regarded her with shrewd calm. With the stillness of his Native American ancestors and the inscrutability of his Asian ones, Arnie often looked like he was half-asleep, but Kate had learned that absolutely nothing got past the big fellow, her friend and sometime conscience. Now he stood with his hands dug deep into the pockets of his coveralls. "You sent the bus back empty," he observed.

Kate raised her chin. "I did."

There was an upward twitch at the corner of Arnie's mouth. "Optimistic."

"I am
not
going to send any of these kids home." Oh, God, Kate couldn't. Each one of them had been referred to the camp by a school teacher, church clergy, or community center. Each had filled out an application, received an invitation, and spent weeks anticipating getting far from his normal life, out of doors, and having a good time.

Arnie's nascent smile bloomed. "Sit down and eat. A full stomach couldn't hurt."

Kate gritted her teeth, but allowed Arnie to lead her to a seat. The kids around them shouted in glee at each other, oblivious that their fate was being discussed. She had three sixteen-year-old counselors, but her over-eighteens, good friends — alumni of the camp, in fact — had been driving in the same car that had flipped over on Saturday night. All three of the kids she needed, in the same car! Between them they'd incurred a broken leg, broken collarbone, and four cracked ribs. Nothing life-threatening, thank God, but enough to put all three of them out of commission.

Kate had spent the time since receiving their apologetic phone call trying to rustle up three new counselors. But it seemed as if every responsible adult over the age of eighteen already had a job, wasn't home, or wasn't interested.

And she was, at that moment, in violation. Not enough counselors per camper. She could lose her license. But if she sent kids home, not only would it be a terrible blow to the children, but her funding might dry up. Who would want to donate money to a camp that couldn't manage to keep the children it had registered?

"I'm giving myself until tomorrow," Kate told Arnie. Anxiety tightened her throat. What kind of miracle did she expect to happen before tomorrow? She'd already called absolutely everybody.

Knowing as much, Arnie raised a sardonic gray eyebrow.

"We're really only one counselor short," Kate reasoned.

Arnie raised his other eyebrow.

"You and I," Kate told him. "We're over eighteen. As of four o'clock this afternoon, we're counselors."

Arnie looked torn between protest and laughter. "Creative," he finally decided.

"Yes, isn't it?" Kate perked up. "In fact, if we're being creative, Lupe can be number three."

Arnie laughed. "Nice try, but Lupe's already gone home. She escapes from this madhouse as soon as she's finished cooking each meal."

Kate groaned. "True."

"There's always Bert," Arnie went on.

"Bert? Is that cadger here tonight?"

"Bert knows the camp schedule better than most of the parents," Arnie said dryly.

Kate glanced toward the far door, the one Bert liked to use to slip in and sneak a free meal from the camp's donors. He hunched over his plate, glancing sidelong periodically like a dog with a stolen bone. In his tumbledown shack five miles down the hill, Bert was the camp's nearest neighbor. As far as Kate could tell, Bert lived off the squirrels he shot with his twelve-gauge and a government disability check.

She didn't like him, but she wasn't going to begrudge anyone a meal. And Bert was canny enough not to push it. He didn't take more than a few suppers a session.

"Even if I were desperate enough to offer Bert a job as counselor," Kate said, "he wouldn't take it. The man is a professional welfare case."

"Agreed." Arnie paused. "Ricky, then?"

Kate shot the caretaker her own sidelong glance. "He's a bit old for this kind of work."

"And I'm not?" Arnie's smile showed the lines of his fifty-odd years. Toning down his smile, he leaned his forearms on the plank table. "Ricky
would
do it, but he makes you nervous."

Kate tried not to shift on the wooden bench. Ricky was her biggest success story. Ten years ago, he'd come to the camp angry and defiant. He'd left the camp ready to turn that energy toward a constructive goal. After passing the bar last year, he was working like a dog in a big-time Los Angeles law firm.

"I don't think his employer would take kindly to Ricky asking for two weeks off," Kate said.

"True," Arnie agreed quietly. "But that's not the point. He
does
make you nervous."

Kate looked away from Arnie's soft brown eyes. Ricky was no longer a boy, but a man. And recently it seemed as though he'd been exhibiting a man's type of interest in her.

So yes, he did make her nervous.

Asking Ricky to drop everything in order to help her out for two weeks would not be sending the right message.

"Ricky needs to prove himself in this new, big job," Kate told Arnie.

Arnie heaved a deep sigh.

"I know," Kate said, "I need another warm body."

"You need a miracle," Arnie said.

Across the room by the big main doors, the tables went quiet. The shouting and gesturing of the boys simmered to nothing. The cessation of noise drew Kate's attention as much as a sudden explosion would have.

She looked over to see a figure take shape out of the darkness beyond the dining room's open doors. She found herself coming out of her seat even before she saw the figure resolve itself into a man: a tall man, one who carried himself with a certain arrogance, even as his feet wobbled an uneven pattern toward the big double doors.

He caught the jamb of the door to steady his balance. "Excuse me," he said, into the hush that had fallen over the room. An angry red bruise closed one of his eyes and blood oozed from a cut on his opposite cheekbone. His dress shirt, which appeared once to have been white, was hanging on by a mere thread at the shoulder, exposing a leanly muscled chest. His wool pants were a canvas of rips.

"Excuse me," he said again, in a deep, scratchy-smooth voice. "Uh... I... Somebody grabbed me this evening. In Los Angeles. Or maybe it was yesterday evening." His gaze drifted over the fifty people in the big room. When his eyes hit Kate, they stopped. Abruptly. He stared at her. Intently.

Because she was the only female? Because he sensed she was in charge? A shivery sensation passed over Kate from his focused scrutiny. Then his gaze fell. He put one hand to his forehead. "I'm sorry, very sorry, but I think I'm going to..." As his voice trailed off, he slid down the frame of the door and onto the floor.

The room erupted. Exclamations, cries, shouts of excitement. Tony and José, two of Kate's sixteen-year-old counselors, rushed toward the man on the ground.

"He's breathing," Tony told Kate when she reached the group huddled over the unconscious intruder.

"Pulse is good," José said.

"What on earth...?" Kate murmured. Under the rips and dirt and bruises the man could have walked out of a boardroom somewhere: clean-cut and recently barbered.

For the love of —

He'd been grabbed, he said? From Los Angeles? Then how had he ended up here, miles from there — miles from anywhere? Kate looked down at his injured face, which now projected an eerie calm. Inside her swirled a stew of contradictory emotions: concern and suspicion, sympathy and fear. Why had he looked at her like that — almost as if he
knew
her? But he didn't know her. She was sure of that.

"Okay, boys. You can go back to your tables." Arnie, to Kate's right, was talking to the campers who'd gathered around the scene.

Kate shook her head and blinked, struggling to come out of her shock. Nothing like this had ever happened at Camp Wild Hills. "What do you think — ?"

"First things first." The camp caretaker was handling the surprise far better than Kate. Speaking quietly, he gestured. "José, you grab his feet. I'll take his shoulders."

"Wait." Kate came back to herself enough to ask. "What are you doing with him?"

Arnie gave her a strange look as he crouched behind the unconscious man's shoulders. "Taking him to the infirmary." He huffed a laugh. "You wanted another warm body, didn't you? Huh. Looks like you got one."

~~~

In the hall outside the infirmary, Kate leaned against the wall and tapped her fingertips on her crossed arms. Arnie and José were in there with their mystery guest, stripping him and looking for injuries. Kate stayed outside the room, reminded for one of the few times in recent memory that she was female.

Finally, the door beside her cracked open. Arnie's head appeared. "You can come in now." He gave her a teasing smile. "He's decent."

"Conscious?" Kate pushed off the wall.

Arnie's smile dimmed as he shook his head. "No, not conscious, but come on in."

Kate followed her groundskeeper into the clean, simple room. The man who'd stumbled into the dining hall lay on one of three cots. A gray army blanket was pulled to mid-chest, and a small pillow placed under his head. His eyes were closed but the slight arch of his eyebrows seemed to supplicate.

She put a hand over her stomach as she remembered the way he'd slid down the doorjamb. A strong man, judging by his curving pectoral muscles, but now helpless.

Purposefully, she turned away from the man and toward her teenage counselor. "Thank you so much for helping out," she told José. "But you'd better get back to your bunkhouse now. The kids are probably going wild with only Bill there."

José grinned. "Not probably. Definitely. But I'm on it."

Kate waited until José had trotted out of the room before turning to Arnie. She gestured toward the man on the bed. "He looks like he's in pain."

"Could be. He's been worked over good, but nothing broken, so far as José or I could tell." Arnie tipped his head to regard the unconscious man. "Pulse is strong and steady. My guess he's either sleeping off the pain or he's been drugged."

"Drugged!" Kate's eyebrows jumped.

Arnie lifted his shoulders. "Don't know how else somebody managed to subdue him without hurting him worse."

Drugs
. Kate's teeth bit into her lower lip. "Do you think we ought to call an ambulance?"

Arnie shot her a strange look.

"What?"

One side of Arnie's long mouth curved upward. "Nah, no ambulance. He just needs to sleep it off is all. An ambulance would be a big expense and unneeded drama."

"Well..." Kate glanced toward their patient. "Maybe...the police?" She winced. Having the police show up would not help her licensing situation.

But to her relief, Arnie shook his head again. "We don't have a wallet or anything even to identify him. So there's no point calling the police until he can wake up and tell them something."

Was Arnie's reasoning specious? On the other hand, what could the police do until the man woke up? "But..." Kate slid Arnie a glance. "If we're not calling an ambulance and we're not calling the police, then...we're keeping him?"

"Don't see how we have much choice. Guy wasn't helpful enough to give us a number to call before he passed out." The caretaker started smiling broadly. "Terrible, innit? To be stuck with this warm body to make us legal?"

"Oh, please." Yes, they had another adult at the camp, somebody over eighteen years of age, but that was a technicality. "So, now what?" She turned her gaze back to their patient. His shape and form could have been a sculpture of male perfection if it hadn't been for the very earthy reality of his bruises, curling brown chest hair, and moistness of life. Looking at him, Kate felt an unpleasant lurching sensation.