Undercover Mistress

“Badly hurt” was probably a given, considering he was lying face down and unconscious. Other than that… Quelling panic, she proceeded with her inventory. He seemed to be naked from the waist up; below that were sodden trousers-no, shorts-and below that, bony masculine legs that, as far as she could tell-relentlessly squashing horrifying images of shark attack victims-were intact. No shoes or socks, which, she supposed, wasn’t surprising, given the fact he’d almost certainly just come out of the ocean.

She ran her hands over a back dense with muscle-she could feel the indentation of spine between hard, rounded ridges, heavily crusted with sand. Moving her hands outward from there, she felt a rib cage…shoulder blades…all well-padded with that re-silient, though frigid, muscle. Her hands slipped down the sides of the torso- and recoiled. Cold horror sliced through her.

Simultaneously, the man uttered a sound, something between a gasp and a groan.

“Oh God,” Celia said in a breathy squeak, “I’m so sorry.” Shaking, she held up her hand in the darkness, trying to see what it was on her fingers. Something sticky. Sandy and sticky. But of course, even in the dark and the fog, even without seeing it, she knew what it was. What it had to be. She touched the man’s back and whispered it again. “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.”

So, clearly, the man was injured. And bleeding. There was no way around it-she was going to have to go for help. But to leave him lying here like this-alone…so still…so cold…

Impulsively, she pulled off her sweatshirt and laid it across his naked back. As she tucked the hood around his neck, she leaned close to whisper brokenly in his ear. “Hold on, okay? You’re going to be all right. I’m going to get help. I’ll be right back-I promise. Don’t die, okay? I’ll be right back.”

She crouched, leg muscles tensed like a runner in starting blocks, but instead of rising, she sucked in air and froze once more. Something had clamped around her wrist, something cold and hard as steel. But it wasn’t steel. It was human flesh. A hand. A whisper, faint as wind-driven sand, stirred across her cheek.

“Please…help…me.”

Something-an emotion completely unknown to her-trembled through her chest. Tears-of nervousness? excitement? relief?-sprang from her eyes. “Yes, yes-I will, I’ll get you some help. I will.” She was babbling, half weeping. “I have to go, now, okay? But I’ll be back, I promise-” Again, she tried to rise.

Where the poor man got the strength, she couldn’t imagine, but his grip on her wrist tightened, holding her where she was. Beneath the sweatshirt she’d placed over them, the powerful shoulders bunched and succeeded in lifting his head barely an inch off the sand. His voice rose in volume to a raspy croak. “Don’t…call…police.”

“No, of course not,” Celia babbled, thinking only to soothe him. “You need an ambulance. Paramedics-”

“No!” The croak became a cry of desperation. “Don’t…tell…anyone. Nobody…can know. They…can’t…know. Promise.”

The grip on Celia’s wrist became painful. “Okay, okay, I promise,” she gasped. “No police-okay?”

“Promise…” The word sighed away into a whisper as his grip relaxed and his head dropped back onto the sand.

O-kay, she thought, shaken. What was that all about? She sat back on her heels, rubbing her wrist and chewing on her lip. No cops? They can’t know? Can’t know what?

Obviously, the man was delirious-out of his head. Obviously, she had to call 911, because if she didn’t, the guy was going to die right here on the beach. She had no choice.

She ran a hand over her face and let out a breath that was almost a groan. Okay, maybe she’d been in television way too long, but dramatic scenarios of every sort were running on fast- forward through her mind. Why would somebody in this kind of shape not want the police involved, unless they had good reason not to? Was this guy some kind of criminal? Was he running from the police? What if the police were the ones who’d shot him?

Celia, get a grip. You don’t even know that’s a gunshot wound.

But…somehow she did. A bullet, or maybe a knife-anyway, she knew that wound in the man’s side, the wound her fingers had touched, was the result of violence-human, not animal-and that it had been deliberate, not accidental. And sure, the man lying helpless in the kelp might be a dangerous criminal, but something told her he wasn’t.

And if he isn’t a criminal?

More scenarios sped across the video screen in her mind. What if he truly was in mortal danger, but for some reason couldn’t risk letting the cops know about it? Soap operas and television dramas and action movies were full of stories about good guys with good reasons not to involve the police. Just because those particular stories were fiction didn’t mean it couldn’t happen in real life. Well, it didn’t.

She cleared her throat and gingerly touched the man’s shoulder. “Hey, listen-can you walk?” She waited, but there was no answer, not even a moan.

“O-kay, I’ll take that as a no.” Swearing under her breath, she pushed herself to her feet. Muscles and bones only recently healed screamed in protest, and she took a moment to placate them with some hurried shakes and stretches before, with a worried look back at the still, dark lump on the sand, she set off back the way she’d come. After the first few plodding steps, she broke into a run.

It wasn’t all that far to her place-perhaps a hundred yards or so, though it seemed like a mile. Her legs were on fire and she had a stitch in her side by the time she left wet, packed sand to angle uphill across the soft, deep powder toward the carriage lanterns she’d left burning on the deck to light her way home in the fog. The lamps gave off a weird coppery glow that was more eerie than welcoming, and Celia couldn’t suppress a shiver as she thought of the man she’d left lying back there on the beach and the words he’d spoken in a raspy whisper, like death: Don’t tell anyone…they can’t know.

At the bottom of the wooden steps she hesitated, put one foot on the first step, then hesitated some more. Don’t…tell…anyone. Well, dammit, she had to tell someone. She sure as hell couldn’t do this alone.

She didn’t consciously make the decision. But one second, she was standing there, about to go up the steps and into her house where there was a telephone and all sorts of trained help only a three-push-button call away, because that was what any sane person would do. And the next, she was doing an about-face, and jogging past her own deck and turning into the narrow canyon between the shadowy forests of wooden pilings that supported her deck and the one next door. She clattered up her neighbor’s steps and onto his deck and then she was pounding on his sliding glass door with her fist; it was too late to change her mind.

She waited, listening to the competing rhythms of the surf and her thumping heartbeat. Come on, Doc…come on…

She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through the glass, and she could see a light from somewhere throwing furniture shadows across a woven grass carpet. Dammit, Cavendish, I know you’re in there. He had to be-at three in the morning, where else would he go? And most likely asleep-or dead-to-the-world drunk-she thought, as she pounded again, then grasped hold of the handle and jerked it hard, prepared to go in and roust him physically, if necessary.

She was only mildly surprised when the door slid open a foot or so; Malibu Colony people were notoriously careless about locking their ocean-front doors.

She stuck her head through the crack and called hoarsely, “Hey, Doc-you awake? Doc-”

She broke off as a short, stocky bathrobe-clad figure shuffled into view, carrying a wine bottle and a glowing cigarette in one hand and turning on lights with the other as he came toward her.

Jowly cheeks covered with a quarter of an inch of reddish-gray stubble creased in a wry grin when he saw Celia.

“Shoulda known it’d be you-my lovely fellow insomniac,” he drawled in a British accented voice that, thankfully, was only a little slurred. He pulled the door wider and flicked his cigarette in the general direction of the water. “Come in, sweetheart, come in. Join me in a glass.” He held up the bottle and frowned at it. “Oh, hell-this bottle’s pretty well killed. But, there’s more where it came from.”

“Thanks-not now-I can’t.” She spoke rapidly, breathlessly, as she caught hold of his sleeve and began to pull him across the deck. “Come quick-you have to help me. I need you. Hurry!”