Body Search (16 page)

Walter Churchill.

“This is a fake,” he snapped, unable to believe that Walter would sell out.

Roberts didn’t even bristle. He grinned. “It’s real. It seems the tycoon of Lobster Island is having more financial troubles than he’s letting on. Besides, I think he’s ready to escape this smelly excuse for an island and get back to the real world. Our offer was more than generous, and it locks up the forty percent of the island he controls.”

Forty percent. Damn. Churchill must’ve bought out every islander that had left in the past decade. He’d finally burned out his resources. Dale fought the urge to crumple the contract, instead returning it to Roberts. “Fine. But don’t go anywhere. I’m going to have a few more questions for you later.”

Roberts shrugged. “Where would I go? Haven’t you heard? There’s a hurricane coming. Until it’s past, we’re all trapped here.” And he was gone, slipping eel-like through the door to Unit 1, the only one the islanders hadn’t boarded up.

After a brief, intense internal debate, Dale knocked on the door to the small cottage beside the motel. Once a sleepy lobster sorter agreed to fetch Eddie’s parents, Dale returned to the motel.

There was no way in hell he was leaving Tansy alone there with Roberts around.

BY THE TIME DALE RETURNED, Tansy had herself back under control. It did her no good to make grand, sweeping statements about her independence, then
practically crawl inside his skin when she tried to kiss him goodbye.

She frowned, then consciously smoothed her expression as she sat down beside Eddie once more. “How are you feeling, sweetie?”

“Okay, Miss Tansy,” Eddie replied with a sleepy half smile. They had established an uneasy bond once she’d assured him that she wasn’t a ghost, and that he was in the motel, not heaven. The kid had an imagination, she’d give him that.

“How’s he doing?” Dale asked. Since returning from the parking lot, he’d been prowling the little room, adjusting dials that didn’t need adjusting.

“He seems okay. Are the others coming?” She slid over when Dale crouched beside the bed and his leg brushed against hers.

“They’re on their way.” He turned to the boy. “Hey, Eddie. Before your family gets here, can you tell us where you were before you got sick? It’s pretty important.”

So far, Eddie was the only patient to regain consciousness. Maybe he could provide them a badly needed clue as to the source of the toxicity. Tansy held her breath.

Eddie scrunched his face up, concentrating, but it was clear that his strength was already fading. “I was at the ghost house with DJ.”

She patted his hand. “Yes, we saw you there. But your tummy was already hurting, remember? Where were you before you started feeling sick?”

“I was looking for the river.” His eyelids eased shut. “The river where I found the pretty ring.” Like turning out a light, he was asleep in a breath. His body needed the rest after its prolonged fight.

Tansy checked his pulse while she processed the new information. She didn’t like the conclusion she came up with. “He found the ring in or near a river, right after one of the big storms.” She glanced at Dale to see if his mind had wandered in a similar direction as hers. The tense set of his jaw suggested that it had.

“They said they were going for a walk that night,” he ground out. He stood and walked to the doorway, stared out into the night.

A quick chill skittered through Tansy. “Your parents and your aunt?”

He nodded. Pain etched sharp lines across his forehead and beside his mouth. “There was no reason for them to go out on the boat. My mother hated being out on the water after dark. But there was something she wanted to show my father—something she and Suzie had found that day.” He swallowed. “Inland. Near a river.”

“Maybe she dropped the ring while they were walking,” Tansy said, feeling goose bumps march up her arms and wishing she could spare him from the other conclusion, the obvious conclusion. “Maybe the rains washed it down from where it fell.”

His lips flattened to a thin line. “Or else it washed down from something else.”

A grave.

Chapter Nine

The mayor died at midnight, the sheriff not long after.

Tansy felt the failure like an open wound. They should have done more. Been faster. Figured it out sooner. Ever since they’d arrived on the island, she’d felt two steps behind the pace. Two steps behind the outbreak. Two steps behind the faceless shadow that wanted them dead.

Sitting beside her on the cracked sidewalk outside Eddie’s room, Dale muttered a curse.

Like the wind and the grumble of thunder that had moved far offshore, Tansy had felt frustration building in him through the night. He was so angry, so unhappy, so worried for her and for the people he was—maybe—coming to see as his family. Wishing she knew how to help him, wishing she didn’t feel the need to help him, Tansy touched his clenched fist and was surprised when he grabbed her hand and held on tight.

Warmth invaded her chest at the thought that he needed something from her, but she quickly ban
ished the soft emotion. He’d made it plain that he neither wanted nor needed what they once had together.

A faint beeping from Eddie’s room brought her to her feet before she recognized the tone. It wasn’t one of the boy’s monitors—he was sleeping peacefully now, not hooked to a single machine. No, this beep came from the chromatograph. It had finished running the sample of Eddie’s blood.

Dale rose. “Now we’ll know for sure.” But neither of them moved.

If the chromatogram showed a series of jagged peaks, there was a good chance the poisoning came from a natural source. Each outbreak of PSP showed a different blend of toxins, with a few core molecules that caused the main effects. But if, as they had come to suspect without really saying it, the outbreak was man-made, it seemed likely that the killer would use purified saxitoxin—the most deadly of those core molecules.

One peak or many? Suddenly, Tansy was reluctant to find out for sure. While the experiment would answer one question, it would pose so many new ones, including the most important one of all: who had poisoned the islanders, and why?

It had to be someone on the island. Roberts was the obvious suspect. He was an outsider, and they could even stretch to give him motive. But Tansy wasn’t sure.

It didn’t quite feel right.

“You ready?” Coming to her out of the darkness,
Dale’s voice slid along her nerve endings and caressed her storm-cooled skin.

She nodded, and they walked into the motel room together, interrupting the quiet vigil of Trask, Hazel and Mickey, who sat around the boy’s bedside, watching him breathe. Waiting for him to wake up again.

Trask and Dale traded glares. Little had been settled between the two, and they had lapsed into a wary standoff that Tansy found just as exhausting as their earlier battles. Then again, she thought, little good came of families, feuding or otherwise. Just look at her parents, and—

And she was stalling. Beside her, Dale hadn’t moved either. It was as though neither of them wanted the final confirmation of what they all knew.

She blamed exhaustion for the fine tremble of her fingers when she ripped the printout from the chromatograph. There was silence in the room as she scanned it. Even the wind and the thunder had gone quiet.

Finally, Dale asked, “One or many?”

The single large peak looked like a mountain, or maybe an accusatory finger. A grave marker. Tansy shuddered and handed the paper to Dale. “One.”

He cursed. “Then it’s murder.”

Murder.
It shouldn’t have been shocking, but the word cut through the little room with scalpel sharpness.

“But who?” asked Hazel, reaching for Trask’s hand.

“My bet is on Roberts,” Tansy replied.

After a moment, Trask nodded. “The people he
works for want the island, one way or the other, is that it?”

“Perhaps,” Dale agreed, staring down at the paper. “But it still feels as though we’re missing something.”

Tansy wasn’t surprised he felt it, too. She touched his arm. “Do you think it has anything to do with your parents?”

He shifted away. “No.” He shot a glance at his uncle, as though daring him to contradict. “That was then, this is now. The attempts on Tansy’s and my life—and Hazel’s attack—have been to keep us from solving the outbreak, nothing more. Nobody cares about—” his voice caught on the words “—about three people who died fifteen years ago. That’s ancient history. We need to focus on what’s happening here and now.”

The fading breeze sighed through the open door, a sad, lonely sound that gathered beneath Tansy’s breastbone like a weight.

“This
is
the here and now, boy.” Trask stood and squared off against Dale. “Your parents are the here and now, and my Suzie. What’s happening now is because of what happened back then, I’d swear to it.”

“You’d swear to a lot of things,” Hazel snapped, rising from her chair and facing the older man, “not the least of which is that Suzie was the best part of you. Well, I know better than that, Trask, but I’m also figuring out that you know it, too. It’s just easier for you to dwell on the past than it is to figure out the future. Well, to hell with that. And to hell with you.”
She stalked out of the room and into the night, which was still and silent. Waiting.

Trask followed her to the door and bellowed, “Hazel? Hazel, get back in here!” When she just kept marching and passed beneath the flickering neon, he cursed. “I’m going after her.” Halfway out the door, he turned back. “Keep your woman and the boy safe, Dale. We’ll meet again in the morning to make a plan. If Roberts is behind this, we need to stop him before anyone else is hurt.”

It wasn’t exactly an apology, but it was close. Dale must have thought the same thing, because he murmured, “That’s the first time he’s called me by name since that night.”

Tansy touched his arm, and this time he didn’t move away. “He’s right, we should rest.” She didn’t want to talk about Dale’s uncle, or about the flash of vulnerability she’d seen on both their faces. She didn’t want to talk about the danger, or the deaths they hadn’t been able to prevent.

Most of all, Tansy didn’t want to talk about Hazel’s outburst, or the sad, unflinching parallels between them, two women irrevocably drawn to men who couldn’t be bothered to love them.

“And he’s also right that we need to stay safe tonight.” Dale nudged the door shut with his toe and shot the bolt, locking the two adults and the sleeping boy into the small, intimate room. “Why don’t you get some sleep and I’ll take the first watch.”

“Okay. I’ll just…” Feeling the small room close
in on her, Tansy gestured to the bathroom and escaped, feeling a hot blush burn her cheeks. She shouldn’t be so foolish. She’d sworn off Dale, hadn’t she? So why was it suddenly almost unbearable for her to be trapped in a shabby hotel room with him for the night?

Because, she realized, this was likely one of the last nights they’d ever spend together. And because of the barriers she’d seen stripped from his soul, one by one, over the past few days. At Boston General, Dale was the social loner, always surrounded by friends he never let close. Here, he had discovered his family, and didn’t seem sure whether he wanted them or not.

It was stupid for her to hope that he’d learn to love his family. That he’d learn to love her.

But Whitmore women, as well as being foolish in love, were also incurable optimists. The pathologies went hand in hand.

“Well, not this time,” Tansy muttered. She ignored the beckoning shower and splashed cold water on her face, hoping to dampen the heat that had climbed the moment Dale locked them in together. “You can do this,” she told herself, “you can be strong.”

Out in the main room, she found him crouched over the pile of battered, salt-encrusted cases they’d pulled from the harbor. Willing her voice steady, she said, “Most everything beyond the chromatograph was a write-off, and I’m not even sure we’d get another reading out of it.”

“Yeah, but this might work.” Dale leaned to one side, and she saw the contents of the open case. A huge shiver crawled down her neck at the sight of the shotgun every HFH team was required to carry. Most teams left the weapon on the plane rather than taking it along, knowing that in the places HFH visited, guns often brought more harm than good.

Every now and then, though, HFH doctors had been forced to defend their work or their persons. Hurting to heal.

Dale racked a shell into the chamber, and Tansy shuddered. But she didn’t ask whether the precaution was necessary.

“Do you think it’ll fire?” she asked, perching on the spare bed, the one Eddie wasn’t using, and feeling the mattress give beneath her. The softness reminded her just how tired she was, just how little sleep they’d gotten in the past few days.

“It looks like it stayed dry,” he replied, but he didn’t sound certain. “I guess we can test fire it out over the water in the morning.” He stood and faced her, his eyes unreadable. “Until then…”

She nodded. “Until then, we’ll keep it close and hope we don’t need it.”

There was a long pause, and their eyes locked. Heat flared between them. Dale swallowed hard and reached out a hand to touch her cheek. His finger traced along the curve of her jaw, and Tansy felt something rise into her throat. She wasn’t sure if it was a scream or a sob or a prayer—she just knew she
couldn’t handle this, couldn’t handle him, and that she was in danger of losing hold of her resolve.

Then he quickly backed away, fetching up against the door frame. “Get some sleep.”

The order was sharp, the husky quality of his voice anything but. Helpless against the feelings, the memories and the knowledge it would soon be over, Tansy held out a hand. “Dale—”

He flicked the wall switch, plunging the room into complete darkness broken only by the faint neon light that oozed through the cracks between the plywood sheets. After a moment, Tansy’s eyes adjusted, and she could pick out the angle of Dale’s cheek, the plane of his jaw. As though he could feel her watching him, he turned and stared toward the bed. “Go to sleep, Tans. I’ll keep watch.”