by Beverly Bird
"Can I do anything?" she asked quietly.
Joe looked back at her without answering. "Jesus," he said after a moment, seemingly unable to move.
"You have to go."
"Yeah."
The door banged, and Maddie realized that Angus had left. Then Josh made another sound.
It was a groan, maybe a grunt, and he went to pull on Joe’s hand. When Joe looked down at him, Josh tugged and tugged again until Joe went to his knees. Josh hugged him as he had done with Maddie earlier, giving comfort to those he cared about as best he could without words.
This time Joe felt his own throat close. "Thanks, sport. It’s sad, but it’ll be all right. It’ll be okay." He looked up and met Maddie’s eyes.
Will it, Joe?
She watched him stand again. "I shouldn’t be gone more than half an hour," he said, his voice strained. "I just need to make sure medevac gets here. They’ll take her over to Jonesport. Doc Mazur—our guy here on the island—is dead drunk."
"Oh, God," she moaned.
"Yeah, well, that’s sort of the norm. The fire department can hold her together until the chopper comes for
her. They’re trained in that stuff. Hell, for that matter, so are my officers. What we can’t do here is put blood back into her for what she’s lost." She watched his face change from disbelief, to anger, to something almost but not quite sorrowful. "She cut her wrists."
"Do you really think she meant to die?" Maddie asked, shaken.
Joe’s expression hardened. "She meant to do exactly what she’s doing—get me to her side. And when I’m there, she'll plead and beg and warn me to stay away from you, or she’ll really do it next time."
Maddie felt sick.
"Under the circumstances, I don’t think it would be a real good move for me to take you along, so I’ll send somebody back here to sit with you. It’s Lou Paul out in the car tonight, and he’s at Gina’s now."
The name meant nothing to her, but she managed to nod.
He was stalling. They both realized it at the same moment.
"Go to her, Joe," Maddie said. "We’ll be fine. It’ll only be a few minutes."
"Goddamn her," he snarled. He slammed the door hard on his way out.
Maddie watched the Pathfinder pull out of the drive again, her throat closing. Of course he had to go. He was that kind of man. No matter what had happened between them, no matter how ugly it had gotten, he would make sure that Gina got to the hospital on the mainland because underneath that craggy, sometimes short and rude surface, Joe Gallen was so inherently good and kind.
She realized that it had never occurred to him not to go to Gina, and she went to sit down again slowly. She thought of everything that had happened in the short
time since she had woken up this morning, snug and smug in her sealed-off bedroom, and she groaned aloud.
At eight o’clock, the man stood guard at the west side of the island. He watched boat lights approach as a small whaler cut through the water. Occasionally the lights disappeared behind a swell, but then they would bob up high again. At length, he could hear the motor, a steady ch-ch-ch, then it sputtered and died.
The lights went out, but the boat had not yet reached the shore. It would ride the surf in, he thought.
He had played a hunch coming to The Wick so soon. He hadn’t logically expected Graycie to come yet. It proved his suspicions, that Graycie had already been in Maine when he had finally called him. It didn’t matter. The man was ready for him. He’d been ready from the time he had hung up the phone.
He took the gun out of his cardigan pocket. He checked to make sure it was loaded, although he’d already done so several times. Then he went still, scowling at the sound of sirens and another motor.
He looked up sharply at the black sky. A helicopter? Medevac?
His old heart very nearly stopped in the split second it took for common sense to explode back into his brain. Of course Graycie couldn’t have gotten to her already. By the man’s very accurate calculations Graycie should only just then be beaching the whaler.
But that meant that the man didn’t have much time. He started for the house at 110. He hurried.
The other cop didn’t come right away. Maddie paced the living room, going back to the window again and
again to look out for him. She finally realized that she was making Josh edgy. She forced herself to sit on the sofa and watch TV, but her thoughts spiraled and whirled.
Finally, she understood the real reason Joe didn’t leave Candle. It would kill Gina, drive her right over the edge. For some reason—guilt?—he was letting her hold on to him. Maddie groaned again—she had no business getting involved with this troubled man, none at all. She didn’t need the complications, and certainly Josh didn’t either, she thought. Then the knock she’d been waiting for finally came at the door.
She jumped to her feet. Thank God.
"We’re okay now, baby," she said to Josh, but he didn’t seem concerned. He didn’t even look away from the television. He’d calmed down once she’d stopped cutting patterns in the living-room rug.
Suddenly Maddie had a thought that made her heart leap with something more than relief. Maybe the other cop hadn’t come back right away because Joe had decided that he didn’t have to stay with Gina after all. She’d thought she’d heard the helicopter come in a little while ago. If that were the case, then Joe could well be back already.
She opened the door. And looked into Rick’s too-bright eyes.
She had been so caught up in what was happening to Joe that she had forgotten her own danger. For one deadly moment, she had forgotten and simply opened the door. Her blood went to cold, jagged crystals that shattered and rained down into her toes. She tried to draw in breath to scream, but there was none.
Rick smiled.
He leaned lazily with one shoulder against the doorjamb, making no move for her, secure in his power, in his superior strength. "You led me on a merry chase. What gives, cupcake? It was like you didn’t want me to find you. I sure hope it wasn’t that."
Once she would have tried to reason with him. Once she would have tried to placate him. But she knew that none of that would ever make any difference. He had his own agenda, and nothing she could say would ever reach him.
If she tried to speak to him, appeal to him, she or Josh would die.
Maddie felt herself sway, and that was when she found she could scream after all.
"Joshie, run!"
Her voice terrified him. Josh came to his feet and was gone from the living room as though a giant hand had plucked him up and thrown him. She saw Rick’s hand snake out just as fast. He’s going to grab me. When he has me, he’ll call Josh back.
Maddie spun, eluding him out of sheer terror and desperation. She ran after Josh. She raced through the dining room, and in the split second it took to reach the door to the kitchen, something sane flashed in her mind.
The table.
Suddenly she possessed a strength that was inhuman. She reached back for it, dragging it with her. She nearly tore a nail off jamming a comer of the table into the door.
When Rick cursed, it was a voice out of her nightmares, and it echoed in her head again and again. And then he caught her.
"Nooo!" she howled, then she choked the word off. Oh, please, josh, don’t come back.
Rick had her left arm in an iron grip, just above the elbow. He scrambled up onto the table, closing the distance between them as she twisted helplessly to get free of his hand. His other one tangled into her hair, wrenching her head back.
"What do I have to do with you?" he panted. "Why can’t you just be good? I’m not going to let you go, cupcake. I’m not letting you go anywhere at all."
And then his hand was gone, releasing her arm, but he still had her hair, and she felt the cold kiss of metal at the base of her neck. Maddie went still.
He still had his gun.
The medevac chopper lifted off, ponderously at first, its nose angled downward,
then it leveled out and soared. Joe watched it with such tangled emotion that, in that moment, he himself could not have spoken a word.
Gina would be fine. A small, vicious part of him wished she had died.
That appalled him. He wondered briefly how he could go on living inside himself, knowing that a piece of his heart could hate profoundly enough to wish another human being dead. But God, he was so tired of her. He was tired of her cruel games and the pain she caused. She was a manacle chaining him to the past. She cut him with her own self-loathing and her twisted love again and again. And he was still uncomfortable with the thought that even a piece of him could wish she was just ... gone.
It was a coward’s way out, he realized, and he wasn’t thinking of her, but of himself.
Gina was not a coward. He knew she had never intended to die. Cassie Diehl had gotten to her in time. She had called Cassie first, no doubt setting the stage, but then maybe she’d balked, maybe she’d had a moment of lucidity—who the Christ knows?—because when Cassie
had barged into her condo, Gina had still been on her feet. Dripping blood all over the hallway, but standing there, waiting for her friend. Then, to hear Cassie tell it, her eyes had rolled back in her head and she had swooned.
She’d robbed herself of her finest hour, Joe thought angrily. She’d been unconscious by the time he’d arrived.
That made his mouth twist into a cruel smile. She’d wake, wondering if he had come. She’d rouse eventually to the sinking disappointment that she had not been able to warn him that he was always and forever hers.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
His heart slammed. Standing there, watching the chopper lights fade into the night sky, Joe realized that she’d have to spend at least a night in a psychiatric ward after this stunt. He thought there were certain legal avenues he could use to convert that one night into three. He had to check into it, had to find out what they were and how to use them. He fully intended to keep her under psychiatric care for as long as possible.
She’d finally get help. Maybe she’d finally let him go. At the very least, he thought, a decent psychiatrist might loosen her claws, and then he could fight the rest of the way free on his own.
For the first time in years, he thought maybe he needed to do that. He finally turned away from her condo to go back to the Pathfinder. Then he froze.
There was still a cop car down in the street, although everyone should have left. He stared at it, feeling his breath go as though someone had slammed a fist into his gut in a sucker punch. Christ, no. If Lou was there, then Maddie was up at the house alone.
He looked at his watch even as he ran, hobbling. He reached the car and wrenched open the door. Forty-seven minutes. He’d left her forty-seven minutes ago.
"What the hell are you doing?" he snarled.
Lou came awake groggily. "Huh? What?" "Goddamnit, I told you to go back to The Wick! I told you to stay with Maddie Brogan!"
"I didn’t... I thought..." Lou Paul grimaced. "I got a hangover, Joe, felt like shit all day."
"Drive," Joe bit out, getting into the car. His knee wouldn’t allow him to drive, not the way he needed to drive then.
"It ain’t my fault! I didn’t—"
"Drive the fucking car!"
Lou jumped, then he drove.
Maddie had no choices.
She realized that with some cold, still, dispassionate part of her mind. She was going to die. And that would be all right, just as long as Rick didn’t get Josh.
Time, she needed time. She needed to give Josh precious minutes to get as far away as he could. Then she heard his voice nearby, an odd gurgling sound of terror. It was too close.
He hadn’t left without her.
She let loose with a despairing wail and fought like a banshee. She took Rick by surprise, just for a second. She’d been limp, compliant, stalling him before she’d known that she did have a choice, just one choice. She could let him kill her, or she could get away from him long enough to get to Josh, to make him understand that he had to run.
Rick would shoot her, but somehow she would get the words out first. She would make Josh understand. And maybe Rick would be preoccupied enough with her death that Josh would have time to get away.
She turned into Rick in the heartbeat that his grip in
her hair was still slack. She raked her fingers down his face, then, in a burst of inspiration, gouged her thumb into his eye. He bellowed, cursing her, and she finally pulled free, leaving hair in his hand, leaving him sprawled on the table. He clutched his face, and Maddie ran.
Josh was still in the kitchen, gasping in that strange, keening, hitching sound she’d heard. Precious seconds passed while she fumbled with the lock on the back door and Rick hollered and the table thumped as it hit the wall. Can't get it. I’ll never get it open in time. She waited for, expected, a gunshot, but maybe Rick still couldn’t see. Then the lock was free, and they spilled out onto the deck. She lifted Josh bodily, throwing him over the railing.
"You’ve got to run, baby," she gasped. "No matter what happens to me, ran!"
Josh cried out as he landed in the sand, a voice out of her dreams. It was a sound, a real sound, and it was both glorious and horrid. Damn you, Rick, for ripping it all open again. Why couldn’t you just let me go?
Maddie scrambled after Josh, falling awkwardly. She got to her feet just as she heard the table crash inside. Again? What was he doing in there? She groped for Josh, lifted him, and ran with him when he still wouldn’t go on his own.
Her shoulders did not feel the strain. She felt nothing, not the beat of the cold wind on her skin, not the ragged tear of breath in her lungs. Run. She scrambled up one dune, almost losing her grip on Josh. Can’t put him down yet. Even carrying his weight, she could run faster than he could. She struggled, forcing her legs to go faster, climbing the next dune by bending forward, tears burning her eyes.
Josh was sobbing, too. She skidded down the other
side of the dune on her heels and finally came to a dazed, confused stop.
She tried to listen for sounds of pursuit. For a moment she could hear nothing over the roar of her heart in her ears. It boomed like thunder, dragging her rushing blood behind it. Then—there—the tread of a footstep, a rustle of beach grass, louder and closer than the sound of the wind threading itself through it.
He couldn’t shoot her, she thought, because he had lost her. He didn’t know where they were anymore.
If she kept going west, she would get to the big houses on the other side of The Wick. There would be a telephone there. But she thought she had swerved when she had come off the deck, and didn’t know if she was heading west or north.
She couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t take the chance. Maddie pushed on.
She hadn’t realized how tall the reeds were in the center of the little island. They disoriented her until she wailed out loud in frustration, then bit back on her voice. Stupid, stupid. He’ll follow my sound. Josh’s fingers dug into her back as he held on to her.
The sand beneath her feet turned gummy, wet. The center of The Wick was nothing but marshes. Except . . .
Her heart started hammering even harder. She remembered this. She did. She remembered.
She stopped and looked around again. There would be more solid ground to the north, she realized. Where is north? Please, God, let me find it.
She angled a little bit to her right. She plunged through the sand, her feet sucking up mud, until each movement was impossibly weighted, the strain of every step dragging at her bones.
Something—driftwood?—cracked and splintered close behind her. He was getting closer.
The ground began to dry out. The reeds began to thin again. She found the path. She had known it would be there, right there, where the sand got solid again.
She turned left on it and began running again. Angus’s shack.
That, too, was where she had known it would be, a thing of corrugated metal and abandoned pl
ywood. The smell hit her first, and her throat closed tightly and suddenly against nausea. It was the odor of rotting fish, mingled with excrement. Her stomach heaved, but she struggled to the gaping opening that was the door, finally letting |osh slide from her arms.
"Angus," she moaned. "Help me. Help us."
Angus wasn’t there.
Maddie peered inside, at a leaning cot piled with soiled bedding. A wood-burning stove sat in the comer. Trousers and shirts were hung with surprising precision and neatness on hooks on the wall.
Familiar. All achingly, eerily familiar.
She backed out again and began pulling on Josh’s hand. "Come on," she managed, her voice a harsh breath. "We’ll go this way. The path leads to the west side."
There was silence behind them.
Her heart whaled hard against her chest. Rick had definitely lost her tracks in the marshes, she realized. Thank you, God, thank you. That would give her a little extra, precious time.
She needed lights, people, voices, the safety and sanity of civilization. She had to get somewhere where Joe could find them.
Joe.
Thoughts of him were like a beacon in the night. He would help her. He would make things right again. She kept on.
Chapter 22
The front door of Maddie’s house was open when Lou turned hard into the drive, the tires spewing up stones. Joe was out of the car before it had stopped, his heart plunging sickeningly.
Not a good sign.
"Give me your gun," he rasped, reaching a hand back into the car.
Lou handed it to him.
Joe avoided the stairs, taking the ramp up onto the deck, then stepped instinctively to the right side of the door. Some long-forgotten, unused memory came back to him from a special training course at the academy.