And finally every tree looked familiar and the oleanders were massing in predictable clumps. The driveway into the Circle Ritz parking lot was one more right turn away, one more interminable pull on her bad right arm.
Someone had left the shady spot for her.
Temple struggled out of the car in the reverse order of her painful entrance. She teetered beside it for numb instants before she locked it, hating to leave her mobile safety zone. Maybe the men were waiting for her here. No. Too close to where she lived, not enough crowds around to disguise their purpose. Too many witnesses who might know her. No. Besides, they’d have to tangle with Midnight Louie, almost-twenty-pound watchcat, if they tried anything funny in her own place. Right.
She lurched forward, touching the ball of her left foot to the asphalt and keeping her heel in the air at the right height, so she barely limped. Like the wine, the properly aged instep remembers. She was amazed to find a rueful brand of humor resurfacing amid the shock and pain, like unsuspected flotsam from a shipwreck. Something she could hold on to.
Just a few more steps to the gate. Once there, she struggled to open it, her key ring and the severed heel still keeping clumsy company in her right hand, her left arm captive to the heavy tote bag slung over the wrist.
The cumbersome stockade gate scraped across the concrete and pulled shut again as ungraciously, but at last it was latched. She could cross the searing cement to the nondescript side door that offered shade and safety in equally blessed doses.
Only a few more steps. This one. That one. Careful. Don’t shake the shoulder, the head, the eyes. Step as daintily as a cat on a hot tin roof. Fire-walking.
She was halfway there when the voice came.
“Temple,” it said.
She paused, swallowing. Her throat was as sore as if she had strep. Temple. She had to think about that one.
“Temple?”
Closer now, the voice. It was becoming a person. She didn’t want to see a person. She didn’t want a person to see her. She froze like a rabbit. A stupid, helpless rabbit on a moonlit lawn. Maybe you can’t see me. Maybe you will just go away, or I will. Maybe—
“Temple, what happened?”
Shocked now, the voice, and too familiar to ignore. She turned, looked through the comforting dark of her glasses to find Matt Devine approaching her in cautious disbelief, like a nosy neighbor in a TV commercial viewed through a distorting fish-eye lens.
Go away! she wanted to scream, but her throat hurt too much to shout.
“Good God, Temple, what happened to you?” he demanded in the hushed, awestruck tones reserved for funerals and hospital rooms.
The words, the shock, did what she had feared. They released the logjam in her emotions, rejoined her physical and mental selves, forced her stability meter off the scale.
She opened her right hand, where the keys she’d clutched had impressed their cryptic profiles into her flesh, across her lifeline and headline and heartline. The severed heel lay there, too, a greater cipher to anyone but her.
She felt the tide coming, sensed the flash flood behind her eyes, heard the flux thickening her voice. “They... they broke it. They broke the heel off my shoe,” she managed to explain, heartbroken as a child with a shattered toy, before she began sobbing.
17
Official Abuse
“I hate this,” Temple muttered, tears and a blood taste mingling on her lips.
She leaned against the welcome support of the faded chartreuse wall outside her condominium. Matt had set the tote at their feet and was frowning at her key ring in the dimly lit entryway.
He had reacted to her breakdown with swift, masculine action. He had taken the tote bag in one hand, then scooped her up and carried her in, up in the elevator, and to the door of her unit.
Not long ago she would have adored being swooped away in Matt Devine’s strong, lightly tanned arms. Of course in her imagination she would have been perfectly coiffed, gowned and made up and they would have been heading for a devoutly mutual rendezvous somewhere high above the city. She had not yet decided where.
But now the ease with which he had swept her off her feet, however gallant and practical the intention, only reminded her how easily the two thugs had overcome her free will by the same expedient. Besides, now she felt like a child who’d been in a scrape at school—dirty, humiliated and in the wrong, somehow, for being hurt at all.
The right key finally clicked and Matt picked up her bag and took her elbow to guide her inside. Her right elbow. She cringed away, sucking in her breath.
His hand dropped as if he had touched a hot burner. Temple tottered in on her own power, through the hallway and into the living room, where she sat on the white-muslin-upholstered sofa.
Matt gingerly set the tote bag down on the cocktail table in front of her. “Can I get you anything?”
“Water.”
He vanished, and Temple looked around cautiously, toting up her possessions, marking their unchanged presence, becoming thankful for that.
He returned with a lowball glass full. Apparently he hadn’t found the twelve-ounce tumblers in the next cabinet. She found it hard to swallow, and the liquid didn’t help her stomach.
Matt sat on the edge of the cocktail table, a sturdy wood-framed square of thick glass, facing her. He laid the keys on the table, and the broken heel, then bent to gently pull her shoes off, the damaged one first, then the other.
Temple curled her toes into the white faux goat-hair area rug under the cocktail table. At least they didn’t hurt.
“Can you tell me now?” he asked.
“I must look awful.”
He nodded gravely, and she almost rose to consult a mirror, but his fanned hand stopped her.
“How do you feel?” he asked in a kindly tone as impersonal as a doctor’s.
The question, and the distance, set her at ease. “Awful,” she admitted. She shrugged. “I suppose my clothes are ruined.”
“Maybe not. Can you talk about it.”
Temple sighed, sorry immediately afterward. The small inhalation hurt her shoulder. “Two men accosted me in the Goliath parking ramp. They got pretty physical.”
“Robbers?” he asked incredulously. “Did you resist that much?”
“I couldn’t resist at all, except kick a little. Until a couple of drivers had a near-brush and got into a loud argument. Then the men... melted away.”
“What did they get?”
“Nothing.”
Matt frowned again, which only emphasized his warm brown eyes under slanted sun-bleached brows. “What did they do to you?”
Her left hand lifted to pat her right shoulder. “Twisted my arm halfway around.” The hand touched her cheek. “Slapped me for not keeping quiet. Everything happened so fast... so fierce. I hardly knew what hit me, or how I was hit—” Saying it was reliving it. She stopped, her teeth clattering together as uncontrollable shivers battered her aching frame. “It’s like I’ve got a fever and chills.”
“Shock.” Matt confirmed her earlier instinct. He rose and went into the kitchen, ran some water, put something in the microwave. She could hear the high-pitched wheeze of the machine as it zapped whatever was inside. His face appeared around the kitchen wall. “Got a blanket somewhere?”
“Not out in summer,” she murmured. “Left bedroom, in the bathroom linen closet.”
He returned with a thick rose-colored wool blanket she’d forgotten about, and wrapped her in it. The microwave tinged and he vanished into the kitchen again. Cupboards banged. Matt returned with a hot cup of black coffee and a box of soda crackers.
“Coffee will help. And eat some crackers.”
She sipped the bitter, steaming liquid, tried to gum down the cracker. Her jaws hurt. Her teeth hurt. The cracker paste oozed down her esophagus like rubber cement, but a little clarity was seeping into her foggy brain.
Matt came to sit beside her on the couch, to hold the cup between sips because she was still shaking. “Could yo
u identify these guys?”
“I don’t know. Can you identify a hurricane? Maybe.”
“Did they say anything, have any reason for accosting you?”
Temple was silent. Matt took her reserve for weakness and brought the coffee cup to her lips. She sipped the strong brew gratefully. The heat was reaching a place inside her that had become very cold and indifferent.
The excuse for not speaking allowed her to consider her answer. To tell the truth meant mentioning Max, whom she couldn’t explain to herself, much less to Matt Devine. And the more people who knew about Max, perhaps the more danger they were in.
She finally looked at him and shook her head, trying to indicate that it was no use asking or answering such questions. He took the gesture for a no, and she let him. “Let me see.” He reached for her face.
She winced but held still.
“You cut the inside of your cheek on your teeth. Bleeds a lot, but not serious. Looks like some swelling near the left eye. May swell more later.”
The calm cataloging of her injuries made them seem remote, removed. Her chills were subsiding, but the pain was deepening.
“Why are you holding your arms like that?” Matt was asking.
“Like what?” She looked down where her hands clutched the blanket’s satin-bound edges. She was sitting huddled over herself, as if cold, her arms crossed over her midriff, the left one cradling the right.
“They”—just mentioning it revived the shock of the blows—“punched me.”
He gently lifted her right arm, supported the wrist. “Wrist isn’t broken, or you’d be screaming.” He pulled until her elbow straightened, and she hissed through her teeth. “A bad wrench, I’d guess. It could be sore for a while.”
He shot her an apologetic glance for hurting her, then rotated the arm. The pain wasn’t as intense as when she tried to do something with it. Matt was watching her arm and her face with that same distant consideration, like a doctor, or a personal trainer. Of course. He practiced the martial arts. He’d know about... combat injuries.
“Ice,” he said.
“Huh?” How odd, not long before she had been urging ice on someone else.
“You’ll need ice packs on it, to bring the swelling down. I’ve got some gel packs you can have.”
He pulled the blanket away, releasing a hoarded store of body heat she immediately missed. “This side?”
She nodded as his fingers probed softly along her rib cage, and crossed her arms over her breasts to keep the precious heat in. The third rib up she felt a stab of pain and cried out before she could pretend to be a big person and ignore it. The next rib was no easier.
Matt’s frown grew deep. “Looks like they did a real job on your ribs. They used their fists?”
Temple nodded. Matt’s eyes went to her arms, again cradling each other. “That arm shouldn’t be that painful if it’s just a wrench. Think. Why are you holding your arms that way? Where does it hurt?”
She hadn’t been able to differentiate the miasma of ache and pain besieging her body into specific zones, but Matt’s words made her realize why she assumed her defensive posture.
“They didn’t just punch me in the ribs,” she remembered suddenly.
Matt’s face whitened beneath the tan. He turned his head away, saying something curt she didn’t hear, then put a hand to his eyes as if seeking inner control. When he turned back to her he was calm, but grim.
“Temple, you’ve got to go to a hospital, an emergency room.” He read the reluctance in her eyes and went on.
“You could have serious internal injuries. What were these guys—gang punks? Did they try to rape you?”
She shook her head. Adult white males. Mean. Max’s enemies. Ok, God, Max, what were you into?
“No,” he asked, “they didn’t try to rape you, or no, you don’t want to go to the hospital?”
His splayed fingers rested lightly on her ribs, a healing touch that almost made up for the trauma of assault. “No. No attempted rape. And no... hospital, please.”
She anticipated the objections forming on his face and said quickly, said lightly, “Couldn’t we just stay here and play doctor? You seem awfully good at it.”
His expression remained troubled, then he laughed wearily, but pulled his hand away. “Not good enough to substitute for the real thing. Don’t be like one of my callers, Temple. Don’t fight against your own good. I’ll take you to the emergency room. Please let me.”
He was right, dam his big brown honest eyes. She’d known she was hurt even during the adrenalin-anesthetized flurry of the attack.
“I hate this,” she repeated.
“I know.” Matt looked deep into her eyes. “It’s scary and humiliating to be a victim. But the worst is over, I promise.”
His tone was so reassuring, his eternally attractive expression so sincere. He was wrong, of course. The worst was still to come, when she had time to wonder what Max had been involved in—and with whom—and when someone would come for her again. But she couldn’t tell Matt that. Couldn’t tell anyone. The matter was too complicated, and now it looked like it might be too dangerous.
Temple also hated being a passenger in her own car. From the moment the two men had trapped her in the parking ramp, she had lost control of her life. Even the fact that it was Matt driving the Storm—he couldn’t afford a car on his hotline salary, he told her apologetically—didn’t lessen the insult of how much had been taken from her in a few, cataclysmic minutes.
Besides, the Storm’s stops and accelerations, its occasional turns, burdened a body no longer anesthetized by the shock of injury. Temple concentrated on not adding a chorus of moans to her unwanted progress to the hospital.
In the glow of an orange-purple sunset, Las Vegas was beginning to light up the sky with artificial candlepower. Strip traffic was thinning to a constantly moving stream of pallid headlights after the rush-hour logjam. Matt drove straight to the University Medical Center emergency room on Charleston, and helped her in. The moment the automatic door whooshed open to receive them, Temple felt a cold stone in the pit of her stomach that said that this was a mistake.
Glaring overhead fluorescents. Functional walls and plain, tiled floor. The inevitable plastic chairs lining the wall, some filled with waiting people whose harshly shadowed faces never looked up. A ballpoint pen chained to a clipboard. A lined form demanding that Temple remember long strings of numbers and write down personal information—like her age—in front of Matt, who might be younger, and who was supposed to care anymore but people did?
They sat together, waiting in a pair of inevitably orange molded chairs. Temple kept her sunglasses on to fend off the threatening headache.
An ambulance siren whined in the distance, then grew louder and louder, like a baby working itself up for a good long bawl. Just when Temple thought she would scream to keep it company, it choked off. What followed was worse. A man’s cries—deep, guttural, repeated over and over. Only searing pain would make a man cry out like that. Temple’s aches suddenly seemed minor.
A knot of people plowed through the waiting room, a small storm of activity in the stagnant pool of becalmed patients, and rushed back to the examining area.
One person in the group stopped, paused, then walked slowly over to chairs by the wall. Temple was watching the floor, too tired to hold her head up, when she saw the feet and legs stop in front of her.
She looked up. And up. And up.
“What are you doing here?” Lieutenant C. R. Molina asked with open surprise.
“Minor accident,” Temple replied quickly.
Matt turned to stare at her, and drew Molina’s notice. Temple watched Molina’s policewoman’s eyes rapidly tour Matt from head to toe, from clothes to posture to speculated vocation and possible vices.
“This is Matt Devine,” Temple said, “the neighbor who brought me in.”
“Nice to have good neighbors,” Molina remarked cryptically, her expression as flat as ever.
“Lieutenant Molina of LVMPD.”
Matt turned to Temple again, confusion in his eyes, and his lips parted to inform Temple that she could tell the police of her assault right here and right now very conveniently.... Sweet Shalimar!
“That man who was moaning,” Temple said quickly to Molina, “must be in dreadful pain. Is he why you’re here?”
“Yes, unfortunately. Nice meeting you, Mr. Devine.” Molina's remarkable ice blue eyes rested on Temple with a hint of speculation. “Take care of yourself.”
She wheeled and was gone. Temple let her shoulders slump. One protested. She had known that showing an interest in Molina’s business would be the fastest way to get rid of her.
“That’s Lieutenant Molina? And why didn’t you tell her?” Matt demanded. “It was a perfect opportunity, if you know a police officer personally.”
“Molina was on the ABA case. We don’t get along.”
“Still, it’s her job—”
“Not the small stuff. Matt, I don’t want to tell her, and I won’t. Maybe I don’t need to go to the police at all.”
He was about to argue, but at that moment her name was finally called. Matt squeezed her hand as other eyes glanced up to follow her into the examining area. She didn’t limp, but neither did her footsteps announce her assertive progress. Instead of a click, she padded as silently as Midnight Louie, only she owed her subtle approach to L.A. Gear metallic pink sneakers.
They made her feel like a kid, as the two men had made her feel helpless, as Matt’s solicitude had made her feel like a teenager with a hopeless crush, as Molina’s presence had made her feel found out. Hopeless and helpless.
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