Dearest Enemy (16 page)

Tossing her backpack through the opening eased the last part of the climb. She shinnied her way up and over the rim of the smoke hole and lay in an exhausted heap on the floor of a brightly lit chamber.

The sudden change from so long in near darkness inflicted something close to pain. She shielded her eyes with her arm, shutting them for a few seconds, then opening and closing them several times, until she’d built up enough tolerance to examine her new surroundings.

Almost afraid to believe freedom waited only a few feet away, she crawled to what she realized was the opening she’d been praying to find. With her heart pounding even more furiously and still on her knees, she cautiously moved outside. When she found herself on a ledge some thirty feet wide, she stood and walked to the edge. Below her lay a small lake, its still waters mirroring the sky and a semi-circle of ancient cliff dwellings.

Relief washed over her as the sun’s light and heat dispelled the terror that had dogged her while she’d been underground. Wherever she’d been and however long she’d been there, she was out in the world again. She swiped at unbidden tears and ran her fingers through her tangled hair. Time to find a way back home, she thought.
Past time.
She found a crude path to the top of the cliff. She appeared to be standing at the highest point in the area, but no matter where she turned, she saw nothing even remotely familiar.

“I’ll have to get to the other side of this ridge, if that’s possible on foot.”

By the time she’d negotiated a series of switchbacks that took her to the foot of the ridge and the highway she hadn’t been able to see earlier, the sun had nearly disappeared below the horizon. She thought that what had seemed to be a range of hills actually formed the back side of the caldera sheltering Blue Sky. That realization helped get her past the fatigue, the pain and the low-banked fear of running into whoever had first put her in jeopardy.

 
When Callie failed to show, Luc decided that reading the Mayfield diaries might suggest where she’d gone. Examining them now fell under the heading of "searching for clues".

The book he removed from the bottom of the box contained the most recent entries.
A good place to start.
By the time he'd worked his way back to the first entries Lucinda had written as a young girl he knew she'd sent her granddaughter to Blue Sky to be a thorn in the Moreno family’s side.

Did Callie know how she'd been manipulated? If she did, she'd earned good marks for her acting ability. If not, she was in for a major disappointment.

Three days after his brief conversation with Charlie Gunn, Luc set aside his doubts about Callie when he found her battered and barely coherent, cowering on the side of the road nearly ten miles north of town.

With a finger beneath her chin he raised her face. “What happened?”

She struggled for words, her confusion plain, even in the darkness. With gentle hands, he drew her to her feet and put an arm around her. “What are you doing here?”

She remained silent.

“Let’s get you into the pickup,
querida
.” he said, keeping his voice soft. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to his truck. Inside, he examined her face in the dim glow of the ceiling light. ”You look like you’ve been in a wreck. Can you tell me what happened?”

He settled himself behind the wheel, accidentally jostling her left arm. She groaned. “My arm — I hurt it when I fell — I think.”

“Did you crash your bike?”

“No.” She leaned her head against the seat back and closed her eyes. “I can’t … take me home.”

“We’re closer to my parents’ place. I’ll take you there.”

She opened one eye and looked at him. “Isn’t this Route 5?”

“Yes, but you’re a good ten miles away from Blue Sky.”

She groaned again.

“More pain?”

She sighed. “...turned around … wrong direction.”

Disorientation could be a sign of a concussion, or worse. “Did you hit your head when you fell?”

“Can’t remember.”
She closed her eyes again. “I need food and to … sleep. I'm so tired.”

Luc rested the back of his hand against her cheek. She turned into his touch and murmured something he couldn’t decipher, but her lips grazed his skin, leaving a trail of warmth that took the edge off the loneliness he’d felt since they’d parted and the mistrust he'd battled. He’d missed her despite reading in the diaries that Lucinda had sent her granddaughter like a guided missile aimed at his family to be a goad and a reminder that his father had betrayed Lucy’s trust more than a half century before.

He’d missed knowing Callie was where he could see and talk to her, missed the kidding, the disagreements. And, daring to hope she would have a place in his future, he’d never stopped wanting her. He’d been haunted by memories of how she’d tasted and looked, how her velvety skin had felt beneath his hands, how his body had ached to thrust deep inside her, and bury himself in her warmth. Now he could add worry to all the rest. He turned back to the road.

She was in god-awful shape. What kind of trouble had she gotten into? She’d said she was going into Albuquerque, but three days later, he’d found her in a ditch with her bike nowhere in sight. If she hadn’t had an accident with it, how had she fallen?
And where?
If she’d been coming north from Albuquerque, she would have passed Blue Sky. Yet she believed she was walking south.

The more he thought about her condition — the pain in her arm, the bruises, the disorientation — the more convinced he became that he needed to know the extent of her injuries. He wanted x-rays, CT-Scans,
MRIs
, whatever it took for a complete evaluation.

At the small hospital in the nearby town of Monte D’Oro, he was forced to settle for an EEG for her head injury and an x-ray of her arm. He fought to remain at her side, but could manage only a view through a window in the examination room door despite a long-standing friendship with the attending physician.

What Luc could see of Callie’s injuries sent a chill through him. The dim overhead light in the pickup had masked the worst of the damage. Here, the unforgiving glare exposed the bruises on her face, neck and arms in vivid shades of yellow, purple and black. Her jaw and bottom lip were swollen and discolored, as was her injured left forearm.

The attending cleaned a cut on her right temple near the hairline and ended up suturing the wound. Watching the proceedings filled Luc with anger and a powerful need to fold his arms around her and make sure nothing
never
hurt her again. Once she'd been taken to a small room on the first floor, a nurse hooked her up to intravenous liquids to counter the dehydration. He and the doctor talked in the corridor.

“You have a special interest in the victim?”

Luc eyed him sharply.
“Any significance to your use of the word 'victim', Eddie?”
Dr. Eduardo Vega usually spoke with the same precision that epitomized the practice of his medical skills. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say anything you didn’t mean absolutely.”

Eddie grinned. “Well, there was that time in fourth grade....”

Luc smiled in response. “There were a couple of times in fourth grade. But let’s not go that far back, okay?”

“Fair enough.”
He leaned against the painted cinder block wall. “Ms. Patterson’s injuries could have occurred during a fall, or other such accident, but they are also consistent with an assault.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“You have not answered my question, Luc. Is she someone special in your life?”

He and Eduardo had seen each other through several affairs of the heart until his friend had taken himself out of circulation by marrying the great love of his life. "Yes."

“Well, then, I will leave the questions to you. If you need a copy of the medical report, let me know."

As he turned away, Luc put an arm on his shoulder. "You said 'assault'. Do we need to consider rape?"

Eddie shook his head. "I asked. She said no. Should I get a rape kit?"

"She wouldn’t lie."

"
Bueno
.
She asked for you, so come with me while I talk to her."

They returned to the small room where Callie rested. She opened her eyes when Eduardo Vega took her wrist to check her pulse.

“Your color is better,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Almost human,” she said. A tiny smile flirted with one corner of her mouth, lifting Luc’s spirits.

Aside from the obvious injuries, she’d sustained a mild concussion and had broken a long bone in her left forearm. The simple fracture needed only a cast and Eddie wanted a twenty-four hour stay so they could observe the after-effects of the head injury and make sure the dehydration had been reversed.

“I’d rather go home, Dr. Vega. I’ve lost too many people in hospitals to be comfortable here.”

"Many patients feel this way about hospitals, but my experience cautions me to conservatism. So, let us compromise." He folded his arms across his chest, in a non-verbal warning that he would go only so far in accommodating her wishes. "Stay until noon. If at that time all your vitals are stable, I will release you."

He glanced at Luc. “It would be best for her not to be alone for the next few days.”

Eddie was saying her condition needed monitoring. “I’ll see she's taken care of.”

The doctor smiled at Callie. "Then I am satisfied.
How about you?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"You could become difficult. Or sign yourself out. But I wish you would not. That concussion concerns me and I want to keep you under observation for the next several hours." He looked at his wrist watch. "The night is nearly through. Give us a bit more of your time."

Callie nodded.

"A wise decision, Ms. Patterson.
We will try to make your stay as comfortable as possible." He patted her shoulder. "Relax and let yourself drift off, if you can. Your body needs rest to heal."

He glanced at his friend. "You can stay if you want."

"I want."

Eddie nodded. "The nurses will do vitals and neuro assessments every hour."

Luc settled himself in a wooden arm chair with cushions covered in fake leather. "Do you mind my staying?"

"It isn't necessary, you know."

He smiled. Her consistency comforted him. "I know."

"I guess that's never stopped you before, has it?" Her voice reached barely above a whisper but she attempted a smile. "Why don't you make yourself comfortable? Prop your legs on the bed."

Although he didn't follow her suggestion, he did hitch his chair closer, relieved to be near enough to observe her beneath the subdued light above the bed. The panic that had been so obvious when he'd found her had receded into fatigue, leaving dark smudges beneath her eyes. The pale glow cast her face in shadows, softening the intensity of her bruises.

"Talk to me," she said.

"You heard what Eddie said. You should sleep."

"I will," she said with a sigh.
"Just not yet.
I want to lie here and get used to being safe again."

"Are you up to telling me what happened?"

Callie had been surprised when the doctor told her what day it was, but it had been dark underground. She’d lost her watch during the fall so she'd had no way of knowing how much time had passed. Three days, it had been. She didn’t remember every detail of that time, but fragments rose to the surface of her mind like foam on a rough sea. She wasn’t ready to ride that particular surf. More particularly, she had no desire to relive the hours alone, the pain of her injuries or the despair of thinking she'd been trapped underground and might die there without anyone knowing.

“I was out exploring when someone came up behind me. He slugged me and threw me down a mine shaft." A shiver coursed through her. "It took me a while after I came around, but eventually I found my way out.”

He took her hand. "It must have been awful."

She welcomed the touch warming her cold fingers. "It wasn't fun."

“You never made it into Albuquerque?”

“I was down there the whole time.”

He shook his head and cursed under his breath.

“What?”

“I came every day looking for you, but nobody'd seen you. Your bike was gone so I figured business kept you away.”

"Gone?" She'd parked it beneath the back steps, never expecting she'd need to protect it from more than the weather. “You looked behind the house?”

“Everywhere, even in that old shed at the corner of the property."

“Maybe whoever attacked me stole it.” She struggled to put down a newly reawakened fear. “He knows where I live.”

"It's probably the same guy who's been doing all the damage." His hold on her hand tightened, though not painfully so. "I think it may be one of Nick's workers."