Skin Deep (2 page)

What
was she? “Uh...I’m Garland Durrell. I live just up the beach.” She nodded her head back toward her house. “I was out for a walk and found—”

“Conn. His name is Conn.” The man still clutched the shirt and stared at her, not seeming to notice the fact that he was naked on a beach in forty-degree weather with a brisk wind. “Are you a man?”

She blinked. Couldn’t he tell the difference? “Um, no. I’m a woman. A female.”

He shrugged as if she were the one who’d misunderstood. “Yes. A female man. How did you know we were here? Did you hear…” He trailed into silence and glanced over his shoulder at the small waves slapping the sand.

“You’re hurt. Can I help you?” She had to get this poor child out of the cold—and his father off his feet. Oh, why hadn’t she grabbed her phone off her bedside table? She could have called 911 already and had help here in a few minutes.

“A healer. Conn must see a healer,” he said.

“A healer? Do you mean a doctor? I think we need to get you both to the hospital.” Maybe English wasn’t his first language. Or might he be delirious?

“What is ‘the hospital’? I want a healer.” He frowned. “Don’t your people have healers?”

Oh dear. “Yes, we have healers,” she said carefully, and looked down again at the child in her arms. His pale, drawn face decided her. Strangers or not, he needed help. “If you’re all right with coming to my house, I’ll get one as quickly as I can.”

“Wait.” The man reached up and touched her cheek. “I think…you are not Mahtahdou’s,” he murmured, looking into her eyes. “I don’t know what you are, but you aren’t his.” His shoulders drooped. “Rest, in a safe place—if only for a little while…”

Garland flinched but didn’t move. His touch was like testing, like dipping a hand in bath water to check its temperature. Amazingly, his fingers were warm and supple. “Yes, rest,” she agreed. “Will you let me carry Conn? Can you walk? It’s not that far.” Would he be able to make it back to her house without collapsing?

The man nodded and let his hand fall to touch a fold of her purple shirt. “You’ll keep him safe in this.”

His sudden trust was oddly touching, if bewildering. At least he’d decided to cooperate. “Of course I will. Speaking of which—that’s my vest on the sand there. You can put it on. It might help a little.”

“Help what?” He blinked and bent to pick up the down vest she’d stripped off.

Then he must be numb and couldn’t feel the cold any more. But what about his hand when he’d touched her just now? “Um, never mind. But you can carry it for me.” She hesitated, and looked at him. “By the way, what’s your name?”

He hesitated too, just for a few seconds “Alasdair. My name is Alasdair.”

She waited, but he didn’t volunteer a last name. “All right, Alasdair. Let’s go.”

He walked just behind her, with one hand on her shoulder. Garland thought of a small child clinging to his mother’s skirt. Except this child was well over six feet tall, solid and muscular under his injuries, with long limbs and straight, proud shoulders. Not that she’d been looking. Well, not much. She’d just gotten the man from hell out of her life and she didn’t need another one in it, even if he looked like an angel home from the wars.

“Can you tell me what happened to you?” she asked, bracing herself for an explanation involving alien abduction, based on his earlier speeches. “Was there an accident?”

But Alasdair disappointed her “I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “I can’t remember. It was dark…”

“Were you on a boat? Did someone attack you?” she prompted when he trailed into silence. Only fishing boats ventured out this time of year. Who would take a small child out on a fishing boat in March?

The hand on her shoulder tightened at the word “attack,” but all he said was, a little sullenly, “I don’t remember.”

“We can call your family, or the police. They must be looking for you—”

“No family. Not any more.” He looked away, but not before she caught the anguish in his face.

She didn’t persist. Maybe he’d remember more once he’d had a chance to recover a little. And surely he must have someone—a friend, at least—who might have some idea of what had happened.

But those cuts she’d seen on both of them…they’d been so evenly spaced, so cruelly precise, that it was hard not to conclude that they’d been deliberately inflicted. But by whom? Who could have done such a thing to a man and a small boy? And why? And what—or who—was the Mah—Mahwhatever he’d said she didn’t belong to that he seemed to fear so much?

Garland led him up her lawn and through the sliding doors on the terrace into the great room. She lay Conn on the couch and started to unwrap him from her shirt.

“No!” Alasdair said, putting a restraining hand on her arm.

“Hey, it’s okay. I was going to wrap him in a blanket instead,” she said, reaching for a thick fleece throw folded over the back of the couch.

“Leave him in it.”

He looked so adamant that she left the boy wrapped in her shirt and tucked the blanket over him. “Uh, why don’t I get something for you to wear, too?” Alasdair had sunk to the floor next to the couch and closed his eyes, breathing hard. The walk had evidently been nearly too much for him. “And I’ll call nine—I mean, a healer.”

He nodded, eyes still closed. “I can wait. Help Conn.”

Garland ran upstairs to her room. Derek’s belongings were mostly gone, of course, but he’d left a few things behind. Like the bathrobe she’d sewn for him a few years ago, made from indigo-dyed cloth she’d bought on their trip to Japan and appliquéd with Japanese ideograms. He’d never worn it. Alasdair was taller than Derek, and broader in the shoulders too, but it would be better than nothing. She took it from a hook on the back of the bedroom door, took the extra blanket from the foot of the bed, then snatched the phone from her bedside table and dialed 911 as she went back down the stairs.

“Mattaquason emergency services,” said a male voice. It sounded beautifully calm and sane, unlike everything else that had happened this morning. She took a deep breath before speaking and tried hard to keep from rushing her words.

“I live on Eldredge Point in Mattaquason, and just found two people—a man and his son—unconscious on my beach—that is, the son was unconscious—they were naked and cut up pretty badly. I don’t know who they are or how they got there, and the man doesn’t seem to remember what happened. They must have fallen off a boat or something….” She took another deep breath. “They need medical attention—I think maybe the man’s had a concussion, and the boy’s still out cold…”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Hello?” she said.

“On your beach? Jesus, I—oh, God, you’re not joking, are you?”

The voice no longer sounded calm—instead, it sounded almost as flustered as she felt. She stopped halfway down the stairs. Something wasn’t right here. “Of course I’m not joking. I need help!”

There was a sound of unintelligible urgent speech, as if the dispatcher had covered his mouthpiece and was talking to another person in the room. “Hello?” she said again.

Another few seconds of muffled speech, and then a different voice replied. Though it was calmer than the first, it still sounded distinctly strained. “Your name and address, please?”

Garland told him. “Is there anything wrong?” she added.

“No, not at all. It’s just that we…we’ve had a lot of calls this morning and I don’t know when we’ll be able to get personnel out there, Mrs. Durrell—oh, there’s a call on my other line—”

The connection went dead.

Garland stifled a curse. What had that been all about? She punched the three digits again.

Nothing. Not even a ring tone. Only a weird, buzzing hum. She stared at the phone for a second, biting her lip, then shook her head and went back into the great room.

Alasdair hadn’t moved. “I brought you this,” she said softly, laying the robe across his knees. “Won’t you put it on?”

His eyes flew open as the fabric touched his skin, and he grabbed at the robe and huddled under it as if it were a blanket.

“No—you’re supposed to wear it—” She dropped to her knees and tried to show him, but he flinched away from her.

“Hey, I’m not trying to taking it from you,” she soothed. “Here—it goes over your shoulders—and your arms go through here—” Holy cow, had he forgotten how to put on clothes?

As the fabric covered his back and arms, he stopped struggling and stared down at it in wonder. “What is it?” he murmured, stroking the fabric of an appliqué with one hesitant finger. “I can feel it…the power…just like the other…”

“It’s just a robe I made for my husband.”

“You made it?” He stared at her. “You are a magic-wielder?”

Damn those people at 911! She had an unconscious child and a possibly delirious man on her hands. “Look, I’m going to try to get that, uh, healer, okay?”

She climbed to her feet and tucked the other blanket over Conn, then headed toward the kitchen, glancing back at him. He was crouched next to the boy again, staring at his arms in the sleeves of the robe. She shook her head and went to the desk in the kitchen. In the top drawer was a business card listing the office and home numbers of Dr. Robert Mowbray, one of the town’s newer physicians.

She’d met Dr. Mowbray at a couple of charity events for the Mattaquason Historical Society and the Friends of the Library and had liked him a lot. There was an aura of competence and integrity about him that was highly reassuring. She needed reassurance pretty badly just now, after that exchange with the 911 dispatcher.

The phone rang five, six, seven times. What if he’d gone away for the weekend or was tied up with whatever crisis seemed to be going on right now? Dr. Phelps, the town’s other MD that she knew, was close to eighty and saw very few patients anymore. Would he be willing to come to the house and help? And there was the hospital in Hyannis, but that was so far away—

Then Garland heard the soft click of the receiver being lifted. She just had time for an inarticulate sigh of relief before a pleasant male voice said, “Hello?”

“Dr. Mowbray? This is Garland Durrell, on Eldredge Point. We’ve met at a few Historical Society events…”

He didn’t pause more than half a second. “Mrs. Durrell—of course. Not another splinter, is it?”

Oh dear. She’d nearly forgotten about that incident two years ago, when she’d gotten an enormous splinter while going barefoot at a cocktail party on Amy Nickerson’s deck. He’d been there too and had removed it for her, using a splash of his gin and tonic as disinfectant.

“No, not a splinter. It’s—he’s—I—” She forced herself to stop and take a deep breath. “I’ve just moved in, and went for a walk on my beach, and found...” She repeated what she’d told the 911 dispatcher and what had happened afterward, hoping Dr. Mowbray wouldn’t have the same reaction.

He didn’t. “Jesus Christ! Eldredge Point Road, isn’t it? I’m leaving now. Keep them warm.” The phone clicked off.

Garland sagged against the kitchen counter in relief. Thank heavens someone was coming. She set the phone down and went back into the great room. “The doctor—the healer is coming,” she said, kneeling by Alasdair again. “Can I get you anything? Something hot to drink?”

He grimaced. “Hot? No.” He stared out the sliding doors they’d come through. “Can you see in through those from the water?”

What an odd question. “Not very well, during the day. Only at night when the lights are on. I usually close the curtains then, unless it’s summer.”

“Good.” He closed his eyes again and was silent. Garland felt awkward, sitting next to him doing nothing. She was afraid to touch any of Conn’s scratches or wounds, even to clean them, lest she hurt him. Surely Dr. Mowbray would be here soon—

“Let me wash some of that blood off your face,” she said to Alasdair, rising and going back to the kitchen.

She wrung out a few clean kitchen towels in warm water, then brought them back to the great room and carefully wiped the dried blood from his upper lip and cheeks. Darn, but he cleaned up well. Once those bruises faded and the swelling went down, he’d be gorgeous…those high cheekbones and that firm jaw with the little dimple in his chin. The long nose would be a little crooked now, it looked like, but it would only add a raffish charm to the symmetrical beauty of the rest of his face.

Alasdair sat quietly, eyes still closed, and let her work. “Thank you,” he murmured when she was done. “Your hands feel powerful.”

Garland was saved from having to reply by a knock at the front door. “That’s the healer. I’ll be right back.” She scrambled to her feet and hurried into the front hall to open the door.

Dr. Mowbray carried a large black medical bag and that air of quiet competence she’d remembered. “Where?” he said, without preamble.

“This way.” Garland led him back to the couch in the great room.

Alasdair clambered to his feet when he saw them and stood protectively over the still form on the couch, the robe hanging loosely around him. “Are you the healer?” he demanded.

Dr. Mowbray didn’t even blink. “I am. Will you let me help you and your son?”

Alasdair stared at him, swaying slightly, then turned and looked at Garland. She could feel the question in his eyes. “It’s all right,” she said, going to him and taking his arm. “He won’t hurt Conn. Sit down before you fall down, okay?”