Undercover Mistress

Hauling back against the tow like a balky mule, her neighbor managed to slow her down enough to extricate himself from her clutches. As he huffily adjusted his bathrobe over his barrel chest, he peered at her in the lamp-lit murk, taking in her bare arms and torso, which, at the moment was covered only by a stretch-cotton sports bra.

“You’ve actually been out in this crap? Oh, don’t tell me-what’d you do, find a beached seal? You don’t want to mess with those things, sweetheart, they can bite your arm off. Come on in here and call animal control. Better yet,” he added, doing a lurching about-face and heading back toward the doorway, “wait for morning.”

“Not a seal,” Celia gasped, grabbing again at his arm. “It’s a man.”

He halted, staring at her along his shoulder as if he weren’t sure he’d heard her right. Shadows made the bags under his eyes seem even larger than usual. “A what?”

She nodded rapidly. “He’s hurt. Badly, I think. I need-”

“Oh, Lord. Celia.” His face seemed to crumple like a deflating bag. He closed his eyes and lifted the wine bottle to press it against his forehead. “For God’s sake, leave me out of it. Call nine-eleven. You know I can’t-”

“That’s just it. He doesn’t want cops or paramedics. He was insistent about that. Frantic, actually…”

Peter Cavendish, known to his Malibu neighbors as Doc-and to most of the rest of the world as the physician responsible for prescribing the drugs that had led to several well-publicized addictions and one tragic overdose, now permanently stripped of his license to practice medicine-heaved a sigh that was heavily mixed with swearing. He opened his eyes and leveled a glare at her. “I don’t believe this. You know what that means, don’t you? Means the guy’s got to be either crazy or crooked.”

“But what if he’s not?” Celia said stubbornly. “Come on, Doc, I figured if anybody’d understand about not wanting to get the cops involved…”

“Sure. Right.” Doc gave another sigh, this one of resignation. “You know this is blackmail, don’t you? Okay, okay. I’ll have a look at the bloke. But I’m warning you-if he looks like he’s in any danger of dying right away, we’re calling nine-eleven and leaving me out of it. Understand?”

Light-headed with relief, Celia nodded.

Pausing long enough to stuff the wine bottle into a potted bird of paradise plant, Cavendish followed her down the steps.

“How far away is this guy?” he asked when he caught up with her. Hobbling awkwardly as his bare feet made contact with shells or rocks buried in the sand, he hissed a sibilant obscenity and added, with a sideways glance at Celia’s feet, “How can you stand to jog barefooted?”

“I have eyes in my feet. And,” she panted, “it beats getting sand in your shoes. It’s not that far-only seems like it because of the fog. There. See?” She pointed as, at that moment, an obliging air current parted the fog like a curtain, revealing several piles of kelp ahead on the smooth slope of wet sand. Including the one that was larger and bulkier than all the rest.

When she saw it, her heart gave a sickening lurch and fear rose in her throat. Oh, please, let him be alive, she thought as she broke into a run. I can’t be responsible for another death-I can’t.

The man was lying where she’d left him-exactly as she’d left him; he didn’t appear to have moved at all. Chilled and shaking, Celia dropped to her knees beside him and pressed her fingers against the side of his neck. Against flesh that seemed to bear no more signs of life than molded plastic. She held her breath and then, deafened by her own heartbeat, groaned in anguish, “Oh, God, I can’t find a pulse.”

“I’d be greatly astonished if you did, in that particular spot,” Doc said acidly, taking her by the arms and moving her to one side. He dropped heavily to one knee beside the body and put his fingers just-she’d have sworn-where hers had been. After a moment, he nodded to himself as if satisfied by what he’d felt, and Celia let out the breath she’d been holding.

Crouched in the reeking kelp, she watched the doctor’s hands move quickly and confidently over the man’s body, following much the same path hers had taken so timidly a short while ago. “The only wound I could find is on his side, there-on the right,” she said when she was sure she could speak without squeaking.

Doc nodded brusquely and lifted one side of the sweatshirt Celia had spread across the man’s back. After a moment he muttered, as if to himself, “Okay…this appears to be a gunshot wound…small entrance, by the feel of it. Can’t seem to find the exit. Give me a hand here-I want you to help me roll him. Take his hips…just like that.”

Thrilled to be doing something helpful, Celia hitched forward, put her hands where the doctor told her to and braced herself.

“Okay, nice and easy now.” Taking the man by the shoulders he gently, carefully turned him. “That’s good. Great. Now, let’s see. Ah, yes. Here it is-see? Huh-damned odd place for an exit wound…”

Though she tried, Celia couldn’t see much of anything in the foggy darkness. She shivered, conscious for the first time of the chill and the damp, and the fact that she was wearing shorts and a sports bra and nothing else. Hugging herself to keep her teeth from chattering, she said, “How bad is it?”

The former doctor grunted and sat back on his heels. “Well, I suppose the good news is, it’s-as they say on television-a through-and-through. And, quite amazingly, the bullet-or whatever-doesn’t seem to have hit anything vital. On the other hand, he’s bound to have lost a good bit of blood, and floating around in the Pacific for God knows how long hasn’t done him any good, either. To put it in terms you’d understand, he’s weak from blood loss, suffering from hypothermia, probably in shock, any one of which ought to have killed him and still could. The man needs to be in a hospital, love. Now. Yesterday.” He lurched to his feet with another grunt and a groan. “You need to call-”

“No!” Celia was on her feet, too, reaching across the unconscious man’s body to clutch at the sleeve of the doctor’s robe. “No. I promised him. I promised. Look, we can-” She looked around wildly. “Okay. Here’s what we do. We carry him back to my place. You don’t have to do anything-just help me get him there, that’s all. I’ll…I’ll take full responsibility. You can show me what to do-you don’t have to touch him. Nobody will have to know-”

“Celia, darling. Sweetheart. I don’t know how to break this to you, but you’re not a doctor. Even if you did used to play one on TV.”

“A nurse,” Celia snapped. “I was a nurse, not a doctor.” Realizing that wasn’t exactly a plus, she added hurriedly, “Anyway, you said the bullet didn’t hit anything vital. Seems to me it ought to be pretty well cleaned out, after soaking in salt water for who knows how long. Salt’s good, right? And you can get me some bandages, can’t you? Some antibiotics?” She gripped his arm and shook it. “Come on, Doc-dammit, help me! Please.”

For a long five-count he continued to resist, swearing softly but vehemently. Then, shaking out of her grasp, muttering about the impossibility of saying no to a half-naked woman, he bent over and thrust his hands under the unconscious man’s shoulders. “All right-I know I’m going to regret this. But it’s for damn sure not doing him any good lying here whilst we argue about it. Don’t just stand there, pick up his feet.”

Celia hurried to comply, but discovered it was easier to say than do. Picking up his feet failed to raise the man’s butt so much as an inch off the sand. Finally, she managed to achieve her desired purpose by planting herself between his legs and hooking her arms just above the knees, then hoisting them up high enough to rest on the top curve of her hips.

“Good…Lord,” Doc gasped as they staggered back up the beach with their burden, “the guy’s heavy-must weigh one-eighty, at least.”

Celia, still trying to keep the middle third of the man’s body from dragging on the sand, had her jaws clenched tightly shut and didn’t reply. Clearly, carrying a grown man’s deadweight, even for two people, was a lot harder than they made it look on TV. She also decided she must have seriously underestimated the distance between her house and that pile of driftwood and kelp. Surely, no NFL team ever labored longer or harder to traverse a hundred yards of ground.

Still, somehow, after stopping several times on the way to grab, breathlessly cursing, at painful gulps of cold, astringent sea air, Celia caught sight of the carriage lanterns’ rusty glow through the fog. Doc, she noted, was wheezing alarmingly as he hitched himself backward up the steps leading to her deck.

“You okay?” she asked, gritting her teeth and sweating rivers in spite of the cold. “You know…it’s gonna kind of…defeat the purpose…if after all this…I have to…call 911…for you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Doc grunted. “Just…wouldya try not to crack the guy’s backbone on these damn