by Nancy Bush
“We’re here,” he chattered, as if the two men in wet suits who’d materialized from the surf with a stretcher could hear him. “For God’s sake, hurry. . . .”
“We’ve got you,” one of them said as if from a distance, and Sam rolled off Jules and reached a hand to be helped to his feet.
* * *
She awoke in what appeared to be an ambulance, looked around, didn’t have a clue where she was. There was a mask on her face, regulating her breathing. I’ve been injured, she thought. She tried to lift her right arm and pain stabbed her.
An attendant looked over at her and said, “Try not to move. We’re on our way to the hospital now.”
“What . . . happened?” Her head hurt like a son of a bitch.
“The doctor’s meeting us in the ER.”
“I was in the water,” she murmured, feeling a gray numbness descend on her like a shroud.
“You’re safe now,” the voice said, but it sounded wavy and far away and she didn’t believe it.
* * *
They put Sam in an ambulance, a different one from Jules’s, even though he protested that he was fine. He wasn’t fine. He didn’t think he’d ever be fine again. He wasn’t sure he had ever been fine.
“My brother,” he choked out, struggling upward from the gurney.
The EMT put a light hand on his chest. “We’re looking for him. The coast guard’s alerted.”
“The boat . . . the one on fire . . .”
“Sir, we just need you to lie down.”
“My phone was on the beach on the other side of the rocks.”
“Someone will find it,” a confident male voice told him.
“Was that Joe’s boat? Was it?”
You’re dead.
Had Jules said that? Were those the words, or had he imagined it?
Half an hour later the ambulance screamed into the hospital drive and swept beneath the portico outside Emergency. The EMTs leapt out and yanked open the back doors. They pulled Sam out and he wanted to protest that he could walk on his own, but no one was listening. Jules’s ambulance was in front of his, and she was already being pulled out. They snapped the gurney’s wheels down and pushed through the automatic doors into the hospital’s ER.
As soon as he was on the ground, Sam once again tried to get off his own gurney. A young female nurse warned, “Sir? Sir? We need you to lie back. We’ll be there soon.”
“My cell phone,” he said again. “Can you find who has it? Or any phone, for that matter. I need to call the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department.”
“The doctor will see you and decide,” she answered.
It kind of pissed him off. No, it really pissed him off, but he let it stand because his head hurt and he felt dull. But his mind was also on fire, full of questions and fear. Was Joe on that boat? Did he survive? What happened?
He was given a cursory check over by an ER doctor who looked to be in his early thirties, about Sam’s same age, then he was deposited on a hospital bed in a cubicle with curtains for walls. He could hear them working with Jules. He lay staring at the ceiling for about five minutes before throwing off the covers. He was still in his pants, shirt, and sneakers, which were damp and uncomfortable, but he scarcely noticed.
“I need a phone,” he said.
“Sir . . .” A young woman in blue scrubs frowned at him from across the room.
“Sam Ford,” he told her. “I’m a policeman and I need a phone.” Was a policeman, but she didn’t have to know that.
An older, heavyset woman, also in scrubs, lumbered his way, her thighs making a scritching sound as she walked. “Mr. Ford, please go back to your bed.” She made a shooing motion. “We’re doing everything we can for your . . . wife? Or sister . . .”
“Julia Ford.” He didn’t want to waste time on explanations.
“Yes.”
“How is she? Is she all right?”
“She’s in good hands.”
“Is she alert?”
“She’s been communicating. Now, please?” She held out her arm toward his cubicle. Sam hesitated briefly before complying and returning to his room.
Though her words had been a request, her tone had held a warning that Sam was unlikely to miss. Authority trip, he decided. He was too quick to judge; he knew that about himself. But he also knew he was generally right, so he didn’t much care.
He suffered through nearly an hour of waiting, his mind searching for answers when there wasn’t enough information to find any. He could hear Jules’s voice occasionally, which mostly eased his fears where she was concerned, but he was sick with worry over his brother.
And then the doctor—the senior one with decision-making capabilities, apparently—checked him over and pronounced him able to leave, as long as someone drove him home. “You’ve suffered a minor head injury, and I’d like you to be monitored.”
“I’ll call my sister,” he said, “but I don’t have my cell phone.” He also didn’t have a sister.
“I think the police brought it in. One of the EMTs said you were missing it.”
“Do you know where I can find it?”
“Ask Jan at the desk on your way out. She knows all.” The doctor gave him a brief smile. “We’re still assessing your wife, but you can see her for a few minutes. But you should go home and take care of yourself. Can you call someone?”
“I will . . . my sister,” Sam said, thinking hard. They thought Jules was his wife and that gave him a kind of access to her and information about her he might not be granted if they found out he was her brother-in-law instead.
On slightly unsteady legs he walked toward her cubicle. The curtain was closed on his side, but open on the other. As he came around, he was a bit startled that she was sitting up and very much awake.
“Hey,” he said. “How’re you doing?” His shirt was tossed on the chair and he picked it up and shrugged into it.
“I have a cracked collarbone . . . clavicle.” She said the words slowly, as if testing each one out separately. He could see the bandage peeking out from the hospital gown she’d been issued. Even wet, bedraggled, her skin abraded, and having just escaped drowning, there was something about her that was, and always had been, captivating. He ignored it. Told himself he was immune.
“What happened out there? Do you know where Joe is?”
“Joe?”
“Yeah, Joe,” Sam said tightly. “He was on the boat with you, right?”
“I don’t . . .”
He waited, but she trailed off and didn’t start again, so he pressed, “Joe called me and told me to meet him at noon at your house. But you guys were gone. What were you doing out there? Did something happen?” He lowered his voice and moved in closer. “Was Joe with you?”
She shrank back into the pillows.
He was scaring her. She’d been through a tremendous trauma and he was scaring her. He had to pull himself back, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to keep hammering at her because time was ticking away, like blood seeping from a wound, each moment bringing Joe closer to death.
“What did you mean ‘you’re dead’?” he whispered. There were too many people outside the curtain and he didn’t want any of them to hear.
She stared at him helplessly. “What?”
“You said, ‘you’re dead,’ when we were on the beach.” When she didn’t respond, he pressed. “When we were on the beach, when you’d washed ashore before they brought you in. Remember? For God’s sake, Jules—”
“I don’t know!” she cried out.
The curtain shot back, caught in one strong fist. “Mr. Ford, it’s time for you to leave,” the battle-ax said through taut lips.
The senior ER doctor—Dr. Metcalf, Sam now read on his tag—was right behind her. “We’re taking your wife to her room now. Did you reach your sister?”
Jules was looking at Sam with trepidation, as if he was a complete stranger. He wasn’t ready to leave, but Battle-Ax and the doctor exchanged a look, and Sam knew
he was about to be tossed out.
“No . . . uh . . . my brother’s missing. I think he was on the boat with Jules. The coast guard’s searching for him, but—”
Battle-Ax interrupted, “Then check with the coast guard. You can talk to your wife later.”
Sam half expected Jules to set the record straight about whom she was married to, but she’d closed her eyes and, well, her pallor was ghostly. Scarily so. He allowed himself to be ushered away from the ER’s inner sanctum. He found his way to the reception area where he picked up his cell phone from Jan at the desk, a petite, older woman with graying hair stylishly cut. He thanked her, and the gods that had found his phone and given it back to him. It was a bit sandy, but turned right on. As he headed for the outside doors and some privacy, he put through a call to the Tillamook Sheriff’s Department.
“Detective Savannah Dunbar,” he requested of the female dispatcher who’d answered the phone.
“Detective Dunbar’s not here,” she said. Probably Brenda, Sam thought. He was familiar with a number of the department employees. “Would you like someone else, or to leave a message?”
He stopped short at the sliding doors, which opened, then whispered shut again when he didn’t walk through them. “How about Stone?” Sam asked, thinking of the other detective whom he was familiar with.
“Detective Stone is on another line. Would you like his voice mail?”
“Jesus Christ. Who’s available, Brenda?” Sam snapped.
“Who is this?” she responded frostily.
“It’s Ford. Sam Ford. My brother Joe’s missing. Possibly in the ocean. A chopper’s already been sent out, but I need to talk to someone. If it’s not Dunbar or Stone, who the hell is there?”
“Deputy Hartman’s on duty—”
“I need a detective, Brenda.” He was practically shouting and it wasn’t doing any good with her or the other people milling around. It wasn’t like him to be so desperate, but this was his brother . . . whom he’d blown off when he’d asked for Sam’s help . . . and now he was gone. Missing, he reminded himself. Not gone.
“Mr. Ford, could you please turn off your phone or go outside?” Jan asked loudly. Her earlier smile had disappeared completely.
He lifted an apologetic hand and headed through the exterior sliding doors as Brenda said, “I can contact the coast guard for you.”
“Please. Yes. Thanks. And would you leave Detective Dunbar a message that Sam Ford called?”
“Yes.”
He phoned Griff again, though it was more likely they would hear something through the Tillamook Sheriff’s Department before the Seaside Police, based on the proximity of the boating accident. Griff answered, but knew nothing more than when Sam had called him earlier, since he wasn’t on duty. Sam considered calling the Seaside Police Department, but the accident was too far south for them to be involved.
Stymied, Sam stared toward the western horizon. His pickup was still parked at the jetty lot. His head ached, but he could live with it. He was torn between wanting to get a ride to his vehicle and ignoring all protocol by returning inside to interview Jules again.
The one thing he wasn’t going to do was go home and have his “sister” take care of him.
Chapter Two
After five minutes of deliberating with himself, Sam decided against going back into the hospital and fighting the red tape to see Jules again. Instead he called Griff right back and asked for a lift to his truck. It took his friend about thirty minutes to pick Sam up outside Emergency, and then he shot Sam a concerned look as they climbed into his black Tahoe.
“Jesus, man,” Griff said, looking over Sam’s bedraggled state. “What the hell happened?”
Sam’s partner was about forty pounds overweight with a wide, approachable face and genial manner. He was a serial dater who really wanted to settle down with a wife and family, but the right woman hadn’t crossed his path yet.
Briefly Sam’s thoughts turned to his ex-wife, Martina Montgomery, and he grimaced. She hadn’t been the right woman, either, and Sam had made the colossal mistake of getting involved with her when things were going sideways with Jules. He’d been young and stupid and impressionable, and Tina had radiated sex and availability. Jules had been involved with family problems and she and Sam had been at odds. He’d let himself be lured into a few dates with Tina, who was rich and sexy and ready to party. When Jules found out, she and Sam were through. Stung, Sam told himself that he’d dodged a bullet. He even half believed it, for a while. They all knew each other, having gone to rival high schools, and Tina and Jules had been on the same cheerleading squad. Sam’s eye had initially landed on Jules, though Tina was flashier, but years later, one hot, summer night, he found himself sitting beside Tina in her BMW, the top down, coastal air making her red hair fly around her face as she drove him down the coastline. What started as trips in her car became makeout sessions behind Digby’s Donut Shoppe, and from there to full-on sex atop the gearshift knob after Jules broke it off with him after he’d confessed to kissing Martina.
He’d been deep down angry. Selfishly angry. Jules’s mother had some kind of early-onset mental disease that her father couldn’t cope with, and Jules was doing all the heavy lifting, so to speak. She’d lost her only sibling, her brother, when he was little more than a toddler, so she was alone. Sam had initially tried to tell her the thing with Tina was nothing, but she let him know it was over. He wasn’t there for her in her time of need, so she never wanted to see him again.
Her attitude had pissed him off and made him feel guilty. He kept seeking to salve his conscience and injured pride. Tina was somehow fascinated by his decision to go into law enforcement, something Jules never was. He told himself he was better off. He told himself that a romance that began in high school couldn’t pass the test of time, completely ignoring the fact that high school was how he knew Tina. He and Jules had outgrown each other, that was all. So, he’d pushed aside memories of laughing with Jules, making love with Jules, sharing tender moments with Jules, and stuck with Martina.
And then Jules moved to Portland, and Sam, fresh out of the academy, returned to the beach, landing a job with the Seaside Police Department. His mother had remarried and moved out of state long before, then kept her cancer a secret from both Sam and his brother until the very end of her life. Sam saw her once before she died, guilty as hell about not being there for her, though that’s the way she’d wanted it. He’d determined he would make up for it by taking care of his father, who’d recently left the financial world, leaving a job in Portland for semiretirement in Seaside. Sam moved in with him at the cabin in the woods and quickly learned his father’s mind was developing some strange quirks as well. Donald Ford became unreliable. One day completely in tune with the world and his place in it, another day lost in a wisping fog that he seemed to slide in and out of. Sam and Joe discussed the situation and Joe aided with Dad’s care as best he could, given that he lived in Portland, he was still married to Gwen at that time, and he was buried in his fledgling financial business. Whenever Joe came to visit their father he would talk with him about business and finance, which always perked Donald up, nearly seemed to bring him back, in fact. But when Joe would leave, the on-again, off-again nature of their father’s condition returned, and the job of caring for their father mostly fell on Sam’s shoulders. Ironically, he was in the same position Jules had been when they broke up because he was the one who stayed.
Stitch it on a sampler, write it as an epitaph: I was the one who stayed.
Now Donald Ford was in an assisted living facility and Joe was missing . . . maybe even dead.
“Got wrapped up in the rescue,” Sam said shortly, staring through the windshield. His clothes stuck to his skin and his shoes squelched when he walked, but he had other things to worry about than minor discomfort.
“The boat? Whose was it?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“But you got an idea.”
“Not anything I want
to talk about.”
“Suit yourself.” Griff lapsed into injured silence.
They pulled up to the jetty twenty minutes later. Griff parked near Sam’s dusty pickup, then leaned an arm on the steering wheel and turned to stare hard at him. “Gimme something here, old friend.”
“I can’t yet, Griff. Sorry. It may be . . . my brother’s boat.”
He whistled. “Oh, shit, man.”
“I don’t know yet. I just want to figure things out.”
“You need any help from me, just ask.”
“Thanks.”
“Is your brother . . . okay?”
“Griff, I don’t know.” Sam reached for the passenger door handle.
He nodded, but his curiosity couldn’t be contained. “And the wife?”
Griff didn’t know all the ups and downs of Sam’s history with Jules St. James Ford, but he was aware that Jules and Sam had once dated. “I’ll let you know as soon as I have more confirmation.”
“Okay . . . You going back to the cabin?”
“After I hear about the boat.”
Sam thought about Jules, her white, frightened face. What had she seen? Why wouldn’t she tell him?
Why did you ever let her go?
With an effort he dragged his thoughts from Jules and immediately thought of his ex-wife. Martina Montgomery Ford, a beautiful, expensive mistake. She’d damn near sucked the life out of him during their short-lived marriage, and once it was over she quickly returned to the circle of her own wealthy kind, while Sam breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever he’d thought he’d seen in her, all the shallow pieces that had seemed so important in high school, popularity being top on the list—if all your friends want her, she must be worth having, right?—proved to be as insubstantial as dreams. Tina was beautiful, haughty, and mean spirited, and never had enough. Her parents had received Sam into the family with open arms, which had surprised him because his own family was several tiers down the financial ladder from their upper echelon social circle, but he’d learned soon enough that their happiness was because they were glad someone had taken her off their hands. When the marriage ended, they actually sheepishly apologized, in their way. They’d known what a workout their daughter was, hadn’t told him—not that it would have mattered, probably, because he’d made his choice and was damn well sticking to it, by God—and subsequently felt guilty about it.