Gray Matter

creatures that lurked just below the surface—schools of blues and leg-sized stripers. He tried not to think of those opening scenes from Jaws. He wished he were back on shore. He wished he had never answered the phone.

He turned, and his truck in the lot looked so far away; and on shore, in the dim glow of the sky, he could see his pants lying on the sand, the leg holes still opened, as he had left them, beckoning him to step in and pull them back up.

Behind him, another long breaker arched against the gloom like a small tsunami and crashed no more than twenty feet ahead. The rush of foam rose up his chest and sprayed him about the neck and face. They were coming closer and growing higher with the incoming tide. With each wave, he could feel the tug at his legs—the push toward shore, then the brief slack followed by an unnerving pull outward as the next wave sucked itself up into a black hump coming down at him like some faceless predator.

Nicole.

She was nowhere in sight.

“Nicole!” he said.

He looked upbeach and saw only the black water and whitecaps—downbeach, more of the same. No long slick body. No head bobbing at the surface. No body flying in with the surf.

“Nicole?”

Nothing but the crash and grating roar of the waves against the pebbles.

“Nicole!”

Nothing.

“Oh God, no.”

He moved out a little farther, scanning the surface in all directions. “Oh, please,” he muttered to himself, feeling an electric wire of panic begin to glow in his chest.

He turned back toward shore. The beach was an unbroken stretch of sand—not a soul in sight.

She could have gotten sucked under or driven headfirst into the rocks by a crashing wave, he told himself.

What the hell would he do? What would he tell her parents? That they came out for a midnight swim and that she just drowned while he wasn’t looking?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a line of foam cresting behind him. He was about to turn when a huge wave crashed over him, pushing him off his feet and curling him under.

Suddenly he was completely disoriented, being rolled and punched into the stone-cased sandbar. When he finally got a foot planted, he pushed up, panic bursting inside. But instead of shooting to the surface, he felt himself suddenly gripped from behind and pulled under.

Reflexively he sucked in air, only to take in a throatful of water.

He spasmed instantly, choking and coughing, and sucking in more water.

Legs.

Nicole’s tight muscular legs had clamped around him like an anaconda, and the weight of her body pulled him back so he could not get his head above water.

His mind shut down for an explanation because he was too busy trying to catch his breath and uncurl her legs, which were locked in a death hold and making it impossible to right himself.

But he could not get leverage. And the more he flailed his arms, the more he spent himself, all the while trying to hold his breath until he could get his face out of the water.

She must have needed air herself, because for a split second Brendan felt her grip slacken as she rode up his body from behind. But instantly she relocked her legs around his chest and gripped him in a headlock with her arms. She was choking him and trying to keep his head underwater.

With panic flooding his brain, his neck feeling crushed, and his diaphragm wracking for air, Brendan concentrated every scintilla of awareness on Nicole’s arms, found a hand, and sank his teeth into her thumb.

Instantly her limbs flew up, but not before she horse-kicked him in the spine.

He shot to the surface in chest-deep water, coughing and choking and trying to open an air passage before he passed out.

Vaguely he sensed where Nicole was, and he turned toward her in case she tried to jump him again.

She had surfaced maybe fifteen feet in front of him. She was holding up her hand. “It’s bleeding.”

He bobbed in place not taking his eyes off her, madly sucking in air as if he’d drain the atmosphere. He could not talk and could barely see, but he kept her before him, struggling to suppress coughing while filling the air- starved pockets of his lungs.

“I can’t bend it,” she said in dismay. “I can’t bend it.”

“Y-y-y-y-you—” he began.

“I’m going to need stitches.”

“—tried to drown me.”

She continued to study her thumb, as if he weren’t even there. “Maybe a cast.” Her voice was a little-girl high, thin whine. “Wha-wha-what did you d-do that for?”

In the moonlight, he could see her eyes saucer and a strange look contort her face. Without another word or a glance his way, she turned and plowed her way to shore as fast as she could.

Brendan trudged his way across the stones, still gasping for air, his throat constricted, his windpipe feeling as if it had been permanently pinched.

He barely noticed Nicole get dressed and run off. He just flopped down when he hit the beach, his diaphragm still fluttering like a small trapped animal. He rolled onto his knees and regurgitated a bellyful of brine and most of his dinner.

For several minutes he remained on all fours with his head down, strings of bile hanging from his mouth, his heart throbbing at an impossible rate, the air scraping into his lungs in little yelps.

Someplace in the distance he heard the sound of a car engine.

Still panting he looked up to see Nicole peel out of the parking lot.

When his head cleared, he stood up and stumbled up the sand to his clothes. He flopped down beside them. The towel she had brought was gone, as were her clothes.

While he worked at catching his breath, all he could think, while staring blankly out to sea, was: Why does Nicole DaFoe want me dead?

55

“You what?” Rachel wasn’t sure Martin had actually uttered the words or that she was stuck in a nightmare from last night.

“It’s the best thing.”

“Where is he? WHERE IS HE?”

“Stop getting hysterical. I dropped him off with Dr. Malenko.”

“Oh, God! Where did you drop him off?”

“His office.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

Out of sheer reflex, she pounded him on the chest. “Goddamn you!” She felt so disoriented that she couldn’t find words for her outrage and horror. She had just been dropped off by the taxi and walked in the house only to discover Dylan was gone.

“We’ve already been through this.”

“You just dropped him off? You didn’t stay with him?” She suddenly felt faint from the thought of Dylan traumatized by strange people in some clandestine medical facility.

“We weren’t allowed to stay with him. You know that. We’ll pick him up in a few days. It’s no big deal.”

“No big deal? I don’t want him operated on,” she said, trying to steady herself. “I decided against it.”