“The devil hang me,” she muttered.
28
Out of Darkness
Isobel hurried across the dunes, heading straight for lights she could not see. Fearing detection, she relied on her sense of direction as she waded through the fog.
Shadows moved, and a breeze bent the grass, blowing the mist farther inland. The air was a mash of shadows and storm clouds, with mournful noises swimming in the haze. Out of that darkness came imagined phantoms, and men who were immune to a bullet’s bite. She clenched her jaw to keep from jumping at every shadow.
She walked, keeping her revolver firmly in hand, until the water tower and a dim light swam into view. A lonely bulb pushed at the shrouded night, and she focused on the warm light seeping through her cottage shutters. The cottage offered heat and safety, and she hurried towards it, preoccupied with the items that she’d need.
A shadow detached itself from a cottage wall. In a flash, Isobel assessed the rough cap, coat, and predatory air, and brought her gun to bear. She aimed right at her attacker’s face. Only she never finished the movement. An iron hand clamped around her wrist, pulled her forward, and spun her around as smooth as a dance. Her back hit wood, and her hand was slapped against the wall, pinning her solid. A flash of silver near his eyes put her at ease.
Relief made her knees go weak. “Riot,” she breathed. She was torn between hitting and kissing him, or both. But before she could act, he clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Are you being followed?” The words were barely a whisper in the dark, but his voice was hard. And his eyes glinted. She could feel the heat of the man, the wiry muscle under his clothes, the press of his body against hers.
Isobel glared up at him, and stuck her tongue out, licking his palm. She could hardly answer with his hand over her mouth. He loosened his hold, but not his proximity.
“Apparently by you,” she said in hushed tones.
“It’s fast becoming an addicting habit, Miss Bel.”
“You should find another; I’m likely to get you killed.”
“Speaking of which, the next time there’s a threat on my life, I’d appreciate being informed. To say nothing of the threat on your own.” His words hit her like a slap.
“I—” A dozen arguments rose to the tip of her tongue, and died right there. The mere thought of him dead made her body go numb. Impulsively, she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Riot tensed with surprise, but only for a moment, before responding in kind. His arms were reassuring, and pleasantly crushing, and she savored the strength of him. He felt like a safe harbor after a storm, and in the murky darkness, they clung to each other. All her anger and fear calmed in his arms.
“I was terrified,” she whispered. Isobel had never uttered those words to another soul. “They threatened to kill you.”
“A regular occurrence for me,” he said after a time. “What would you have done if our positions were reversed?”
She drew back, only slightly, enough to catch his eyes. “I doubt I could sneak up on you. And I sure couldn’t pin you so soundly.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I’d likely walk away,” she said casually.
“Nice try, Bel,” he drawled. “I’ll hardly leave when I’ve only just found you.”
“How did you find me?”
“Carefully,” he said. “How did you escape those men?”
“With difficulty,” she answered. “Now what? Are you planning on lecturing me about my reckless behavior?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he whispered against her ear. “I came to return your umbrella.”
“Is that what’s pressing against me?”
His lip quirked, and his fingers slipped around her neck, following her jawline in a gentle caress that sent shivers down her spine. He leaned closer, his beard teasing the corner of her lips, promising more, and then he stopped, drawing back. “Your lip is bleeding.”
“Dammit, you were thinking of kissing me, weren’t you?”
“I wasn’t just thinking about it.” Riot turned her face towards the light seeping through a shutter. “Who attacked you tonight?”
“A hellion.” She sucked on her swollen lip, and tasted blood. “I’ll explain later. Right now I need your help.” The truth of it was, she was glad to see him. Overjoyed, even.
“I’m at your service, Miss Bel. On one condition.”
She arched a brow.
“Try to remember that you have a partner.”
She smirked. “Not an easy thing for me.”
“We’re both learning, then. How can I help?”
Isobel reluctantly untangled herself from his arms, and walked over to the shed. A tarp, she decided, would be preferable to a rug. The key was with the landlady, and she still hadn’t mastered picking a padlock. “Do you have your lock picks?”
Riot produced his tools, and opened the lock in under five seconds. If she hadn’t felt so harried, she might have been annoyed with the man.
“I need help carrying a wounded man,” she whispered, as she rummaged through the shed in search of a tarp.
“At least it isn’t a body,” Riot muttered.
Isobel glanced back at him. “How much did Ari tell you?”
“For the record, I twisted his arm.”
“I had hoped he’d wait at least twenty-four hours.”
“He found your shirt.” There was a question in his voice. And a good deal of concern.
“My virtue is as tattered as it’s always been.” Next time she’d dump her clothes in the bay. With the tarp tucked under her arm, the two set out across the dunes. Riot had his electric light box, but the fog only amplified and scattered the light, so they relied on their senses.
“I found the girl those men were looking for,” she whispered. “She’s been caring for a wounded hermit in a sand cave. He’s in a bad way, and the girl won’t leave his side. You didn’t charge around Ocean Beach again asking after me, did you?” Dread rose in her throat.
“Give me more credit than that, Bel. Although I might have if Lotario hadn’t told me what happened.”
She bristled. “I didn’t ask you to look for me.”
He said nothing. Isobel quickened her pace, and that silence he wielded like a weapon hit her over the head. Anger, frustration, and pride beat at her heart, until his mere presence melted her defenses. “I’m glad you found me, Riot,” she whispered into the stillness.
“So am I,” he said easily.
They walked in silence, and when her unerring sense of direction warned her that she was approaching the right valley, she slowed her pace. “Try the light.”
He clicked his electric box on, and light flooded the small valley, illuminating tendrils and puffs of floating mist. The last thing Isobel wanted to do was surprise the hellion in the hole again. She moved through the drifting fog banks, and crouched by the hole. Riot shone his light inside.
The small cave was reinforced with driftwood and salvaged lumber. Roots curled around the ceiling and poked between boards. The missing bucket was there, a bowl, a mat, and a small fire, shielded in a sand pit. Despite the tiny source of warmth, the cave was cold, and the dampness didn’t help the man lying on the mat. He was an alarming shade of pale, and he burned with fever, while murmuring in Cantonese. The girl raised a hand, shielding the light from her eyes.
“I’ve brought help,” Isobel explained. “We’ll carry him in this.”
Language was as much about body language as speech. Isobel pushed the folded tarp inside the cave. But the girl only glared. She was looking beyond Isobel’s shoulder. At Riot.
He said something quick in flawless Cantonese. Isobel gaped, but the girl kept her lips firmly sealed. Riot repeated his words, and pointed at the tarp. Finally, the girl wrung out the rag she’d been using to mop the man’s brow, and began unfolding the tarp, spreading it beside her patient.
“You never told me you spoke Cantonese,” Isobel whispered.
“There are a number of things I haven’t told you.” There was little humor in his words. She wanted to drag him back to the warmth of the cottage and hear every single word he had for her and then some, but there was other business at hand.
Isobel shooed the girl out of the cave, and crawled inside. Working in the tight space, she wedged part of the tarp under the feverish man. He was dingy, covered in blood, and his long black queue laid on his chest. She slid her hands under his arms, braced herself, and moved him to the side. He stifled a scream with gritted teeth.
Nearly three days wounded. Not good, not good at all.
There was no assessing his wounds there, so Isobel shed her coat, and laid it over the man. Riot handed his light box over to the girl, and grabbed the edge of the tarp. He dragged the man outside, and moved over to his head, while Isobel moved to the lighter end. Together, they lifted, and began carrying their awkward load over the dunes, slipping on sand with every step.
It was a grueling journey, and Isobel had to stop and rest frequently. The man wasn’t heavy, but the long days had taken their toll on her, and her bruised stomach protested the work. Every time they stopped, the girl stood glaring at her.
Moving in a daze, Isobel was dimly aware of a door opening, the sound of her footsteps shuffling over wood, and finally a wave of warmth sweeping over her. As they shuffled the man towards the bed, she realized Riot was speaking to the girl. She looked at him as he carefully carried their load while navigating the cottage backwards. Perspiration covered his brow, his glasses were fogged, and the foreign tones flowing from his throat seemed surreal. It was a decidedly one-sided conversation, however.
On the count of three, they lifted the man onto the bed, and Isobel sat down by his legs, and rested her elbows on her knees. Riot repeated a question. And finally the girl spoke, with clipped brevity and iron in her tones.
“What did she say?” Isobel asked in a breathless wheeze. In the light of the cottage, the girl looked even more severe. The scars were stark against her malnourished face.
“Her name is Sao Jin,” he answered, removing his spectacles to wipe them clean. “She claims this is her brother, and some men shot him on the dunes while they were fishing.”
Isobel grunted. She swiveled towards their patient, and began unbuttoning the toggles of the man’s padded jacket. A wad of blood-soaked bandages had been stuffed against his chest. She frowned.
“I don’t suppose you know a trustworthy surgeon?” She glanced up at Riot, and stopped. The room had gone deathly silent. Riot was taut as a bowstring, and as pale as the man he stared at.
“What is it?” She moved instantly to Riot’s side, and looked down at the hermit, as if the new angle would reveal something more. Free of the dim cave, she studied the man for the first time. He was young, and handsome. Still possessed of the fine bone structure and near beauty of a young man who had yet to fully mature. A scar, like a tear, dripped from his right eye. But the disfiguration only added to his beauty rather than distracted. She thought him no more than nineteen.
One moment Riot stood stark still, and the next he snapped. He surged forward, and grabbed the man by the collar, half lifting him off the bed. His knuckles were white, his hands shaking, and his voice was chillingly cold.
“Hei san la nei, chap chung!” Riot growled.
Isobel was too stunned to move. Her brain tripped over the Cantonese words, but the demand in Riot’s voice was unmistakable. The young man opened his eyes. They grew wide, and he fumbled at his side, muttering, half-dazed.
Riot caught his wrist in an iron grip. And Jin started yelling, her distress clear, fast with a growing tinge of anger.
Riot let the man’s collar go, but kept him pinned while he patted his jacket with the other hand. He reached into the voluminous garment and pulled out a hatchet-like weapon with a very short haft.
Riot bit out words in Cantonese, and Jin charged, knife in hand. Isobel cursed, snatching the girl up and earning another bruise from a well-placed slippered foot. She wrenched the blade from the girl’s hand, and plopped her into a chair.
“Stay,” Isobel ordered.
The command in her voice stunned Jin to silence. She turned in time to see the hermit clutch Riot’s coat. He rasped out desperate words, and then went limp. Riot’s hands tightened; he was on the verge of shaking him back awake.
“Riot,” Isobel said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “He’s close to the grave already. Push him there, and you won’t get your answers.” She might not understand the words, but she knew an interrogation when she saw one.
The hatchet was damning enough. Now she wasn’t so sure who killed Lincoln Howe.
Riot let the man go, passed the hatchet to her, and finished searching the young man. There were no other weapons on him. As soon as Riot finished, he stepped away, and stood staring at the man as if he were a ghost.
Isobel inserted herself in his line of sight, and looked up into his eyes, but they were so very far away. “Talk to me, Riot,” she whispered, placing a hand on his chest.
Slowly, his deep brown eyes focused on her. They were hard, and full of pain. “He’s no hermit,” he said hoarsely. “He’s boo how doy—a hatchet man.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the blood drain from Jin’s face. The girl went very still.
“How do you know?” she asked. Anyone could take a cleaver and chop off the handle.
Riot’s gaze flicked to the man, and then he quickly looked away, half turning his back as if he’d been struck. “He put a bullet in my head.”
29
Into Light
What did one say to ‘He put a bullet in my head’? Isobel stood frozen in shock. This sort of silence was as thick as it came—like a quagmire that swallowed time.
Isobel glanced at the hatchet man. Wounded, feverish, near to dying, he looked a world away from the type of man who’d put a gun to another’s head, and pull the trigger at sixteen. Jin was quiet, her eyes wide, her gaze dancing from the man she had cared for to Riot who had moved to the sitting room. And Isobel looked, too. To the head of slightly curling black hair, and the strong shoulders, and the narrow back that was currently as stiff as a rod.
Tired, sore, and reeling, Isobel closed her eyes, and smothered emotion, reaching for the comforting embrace of thought and reason. Tracks, her mind shouted.
“Riot,” she called. She didn’t know if he was on the verge of revenge or bolting, but she wasn’t about to find out. She hurried to his side. They needed focus; he needed a task. “We’ve left a trail that a man full in his cups could follow. We need to get them out of here. Tonight. We can sort the rest out later.”
Closer now, she saw him better. And what she saw alarmed her. Atticus Riot shook from his head to his toes, as if his past were bleeding from his body. That look had returned. Haunted and wild, and so unlike him.
She interlaced her fingers with his own. “The girl needs your help. I need your help, Riot.”
The admission broke through whatever hell he was reliving. She knew it would.
“I’m not the man you think I am.” His voice rasped like a dry wind.
“You’re the man standing in front of me,” she whispered. “That’s all you need to be. And right now I need you to find a wagon.”
A simple task was enough. His fingers tightened for an instant, before he grabbed his hat, and stepped out into the night. She only hoped he’d return.
The fog stayed thick and low, clinging to San Francisco like a lover, as they bumped through the night in a borrowed wagon. Isobel hadn’t asked where Riot found it, and he hadn’t offered an explanation. Without a word, he had loaded the hatchet man into the wagon, and climbed onto the seat.
Isobel hunkered under the tarp with Jin and the wounded. The girl sat with her back against the farthest board. Isobel could feel a cool glare in the darkness. Was there hate, or fear, behind those eyes?
She remembered Jin’s reaction when Riot had said the hermit was a hatchet man. De
spite what Jin claimed, Isobel didn’t believe her story for a moment—that they were attacked while fishing. So why had she lied? Who was she protecting? And what was a hatchet man doing on the dunes?
A tumult of questions rattled around her head. Unfortunately, both girl and hatchet man were unfit for interrogation.
The wagon rolled to a stop, and she peeked out from under the tarp. A dim light flickered over the doors to the carriage house at Ravenwood estate. They had decided his house was the best place to conceal the pair. It was closer than her boat, and also less conspicuous than carrying a half-dead man down the dock.
Riot hopped off the seat, and gently coaxed the horses inside. Scents of fresh hay, oiled springs, and the tang of metal filled the air.
Isobel climbed over her bicycle, and slid off the wagon bed. She hit the dirt, staggered, and caught herself before falling. She was stiff with cold and bruises, and irritated by it. She looked out into the night, searching for any lurking shadows. With a shiver, she firmly shut the doors.
Riot flicked on the electric lights.
“What’s going on?” Tim whispered. The old man currently stood wild-eyed at the bottom of the stairway with shotgun in hand, and wearing nothing but his long johns. It was a sight Isobel could have lived without.
Riot didn’t answer. He simply stood, looking at his old friend. Tim’s eyes flickered to Riot, and he shifted, nearly shrinking back a step. Isobel was tired of not knowing what was going on. She felt like she had picked up a book, and started reading from the wrong end. And all the dialogue was scratched out.
The air felt like a storm about to snap. And she didn’t want to find out what would happen when it did. Clearing her throat, she stepped up to the side of the wagon, and ripped the tarp back with a flourish. “We’ve brought you one guest, and one prisoner in need of a discreet surgeon.”
The announcement broke whatever silent standoff the two men were having. Tim moved quickly to the wagon’s side, and stood on his toes to peek over. He barely passed the rim. “I’ll fetch a surgeon.”
Record of Blood Page 21