Many The Miles by Annie Holder

© Annie Holder 2019

With sincere apologies to all Americans for the liberties I have taken with your language…

(This text may contain swearing or sexual references which may not be suitable for readers under 18.)

You can run, but you can’t hide…

Gage Rutter is alone, and that’s the way he wants it - travelling the empty trails, always moving, keeping the memories at bay.

Sometimes, he’s even able to forget that terrible night; the raging wildfire that killed his wife and week-old son.

Irrevocably damaged by the pain of loss and the guilt of survival, encounters with humanity are agonising now. All he needs to sustain him is scouring wind, open sky, and the freedom of the road.

When he stumbles upon the barely breathing body of a horrifically injured woman in a remote gulley, is the fragile peace of Gage’s self-imposed isolation about to be shattered forever?

Who is she, where has she come from, and why won’t she utter a word?

BEHIND YOU

Mal would kill her if he knew what she was doing, but he’d demanded proof, and she was determined to get it.  Whatever noble crap she might spout about this being a crusade for justice, the truth was more prosaic.  Bye-bye backwater; hello big-time.  The political scoop of the decade, if she could obtain watertight evidence – and for that, she literally had to catch him in the act.  Nothing else would do.

At ground level was a small, square window.  No lights showed at the rear of the house.  She could squat here all night waiting for something to happen, or she could investigate what she’d been told about the basement.

A swift sprint across the well-lit garden from sunken jetty steps to rear terrace, dropping to her stomach and wriggling sideways under cover of the nearest shrubs; she caught her breath, watched the house, and waited. 

Nothing happened. 

No one appeared; was she alone here? 

She scooped a small handful of gravel and threw with little accuracy in the direction of the window. 

Waited again. 

Still nothing. 

No light within. 

No discernible movement. 

She scooped and threw another handful.  Hard to aim from flat on her stomach under the lush branches, the gravel bounced off the patio and peppered the rendered side of the house with muddy blobs, fortunately liberally spattering the window too.  This time, there was something; a writhing, squirming stripe of white like a worm crawling behind the glass.  Then another.  Rolling awkwardly onto one hip, she fumbled with her cellphone in its waterproof pouch.  She snapped a series of pictures, zooming in on the last.  Despite the camera lens having to focus through the plastic pocket, she could easily identify that the worm was a finger!

As she scrabbled from her hiding place, the pouch slid into the freshly dug earth, forgotten in her exhilaration.  Scuttling across the lawn and crouching at the window, she tapped cautiously.  More fingers, different shades of skin, hooked over the boards she now realised covered the window on the inside.  Female fingers; slim, with delicate nails.  Some bitten, some with coloured varnish chipped and flaking; more and more different digits poking through.  Pressing against the glass, cupping her hands around her face to block out the garden lights, she could see through slits in the haphazardly affixed planks to the glint and moisture of eyes peering back at her.  The swoop of long lashes.  The curve of a female cheek.  Movement behind the wood.  A change of observer.  Different skin.  An earring.  The collar of an animal-print blouse.  Rocking back onto her heels, she felt frantically around the window for a gap where she could slide something under the frame to prise it open.  Perhaps it would be better to find a stone to smash the glass?  Utterly absorbed in casting about the immediate vicinity on hands and knees for a suitably heavy rock, the crunch of shoe on gravel made her start, and whirl around.  She saw legs in dark suit trousers, creases pressed to sharp points, and was about to dart crablike towards the cover of the hedge when something heavy struck repeatedly above her left ear, making her pitch forward; burning, throbbing agony spreading outward from the impact point.  In the close and muggy night air, she registered the surprising cold of the sprinkler-watered lawn against her cheek, and sensed looming shadows suddenly blocking the light.

****

The sound shifted.  The rumble that had been building behind him like approaching truck tyres on a deserted highway fell silent for so short a time he was barely aware of its absence, but when it guttered and roared anew, he subconsciously understood it was closer now; louder, and something more; something worse…

Reassured that the flat slab of heat had remained unwaveringly at his back as he’d tugged at the stable doors and hauled open the gates, suddenly his left eye was prickling and blinking involuntarily, and was it his imagination or did his back feel cooler, as if he’d been snoozing in the summer grass and unwelcome clouds had covered the sun?  The left side of his face felt scorched, and his ear throbbed uncomfortably.  He brought up a distracted palm to cup it protectively.  The released horses turned as one like a shoal of fish reacting to danger.  Ears up, eyes bulging, nostrils flaring, they surged past him directly towards where he believed the threat still was.  Why would they run straight into trouble?

He swung in the opposite direction to the fleeing animals, terror tightening within him.  Sure enough, the wildfire had done what they said it wouldn’t.  When he’d left the house, the flames were still at a distance, doing what the experts had predicted, their travel slowing as the wind dropped.  Time enough, he’d reasoned, to get down to the stables, turn the precious horses loose to outrun danger if it was within their power, and get back to the house for Joelle and the baby.  He could carry both recovering wife and newborn son to the truck, throw in the bags they’d already packed, and hightail it into town like everyone else. 

The birth had been premature, complicated, gruelling, and Jo had needed a caesarean.  Days later and she was already up and about, but sore, slow, moving with the ginger care of unpredictable pain, and unable to manage stairs or baby without assistance.

Even as he began the several-hundred-yard pelt back up the stony track from stables to farmhouse, he already comprehended the change in wind direction was not the forecasted slackening in intensity, but simply the demon casting about for fresh morsels to satisfy its still-voracious hunger.  Now, he could see the flames shooting upward forty feet or more behind the sloping tin roof of the farmhouse, moving closer with unbelievable speed.  Each heavy-bass whump as the next huge, tinder-dry fir tree ignited like a struck match sent a vibration through the ground under his feet.  The pines glowed white-hot as they were consumed by the bright orange fire.  The dense forest petered out ten yards from the rear of the house.  Nothing.  As a kid, he’d seen wildfires leap the wide, flat lanes of empty highway in the time it took a dumbstruck boy to draw sharp breath.  The sun-bleached lawn would prove a woefully insufficient firebreak.  He tried to run faster.  The shiny soles of his boots slipped in the stony dust and several times he nearly went over, throwing out a frantic palm to steady himself.  Chest heaving in the searing, smoke-filled air, he gasped aloud with every agonising breath, each exhalation a shout of hopeless pain, burning from the inside out.

The fire roared louder than a sandblaster the closer he got, the air around him thick with falling ash and glowing embers.  Every tree that tumbled sent a shower of sparks shooting upward in a vertical column like a ghoulish firework.  He could smell something that reminded him of branding – burnt fur and blistering skin – and realised it must be him, the hair on his exposed arms and bare head singeing with the indescribable heat.  His eyes were so sore and pouring with tears he couldn’t make the house out properly; an indistinct black silhouette against an inferno so bright it hurt to look at it.  He was close enough to hear the screaming now.  He pictured what he could not see – Joelle clutching the wailing baby to her breast, a prisoner in the upstairs of the already-burning house, leaning as far out of the window as she could get, yelling for rescue.  Could she see him, illuminated as he must be by the brightness of the flames, ineffectually stumbling and staggering, getting slower and weaker with every step?

“Gaaaaaage!”

That was when the flames hit the propane tanks, punching out a fireball like a bomb blast, and silencing everything but the scream inside his soul.

****

She was able to discern only daylight or darkness through minute cracks in the corrugated metal walls of her prison.

She was glad of her wetsuit, as the floor was permanently saturated, and it at least meant she could retain some body heat despite the moisture seeping into the neoprene.  It was hard to change position.  She wasn’t restrained, but the slightest attempt at movement made her feel dizzy, nauseous, and produced such sharp, stabbing pains across the crown of her head that it felt as if she was a plush toy in an arcade game, slowly borne aloft and dangled by a gripping claw around her skull.  Enforced immobility kept her sitting upright, back against the wall, head leant uncomfortably on the ridged metal, legs splayed across the wet floor, bottom numb.

During the day, her prison was an airless oven; at night, an icebox.  In the morning, a blinding shaft of white light sliced through the dimness directly in front of her, touching first her kayak shoes, then the grubby skin of her shin, sliding up her thigh, rippling across the wrinkles of wetsuit and rash vest, and finally shining straight into her squinting left eye, making black dots pulse disconcertingly before her swimming vision.  The sunlight moved to her right throughout the day, stabbing harshly through screw holes and mismatched panels, motes of dust temporarily caught in its piercing beam revolving slowly like ballerinas pirouetting in a stage spotlight.  Although the travelling sun marked the passage of time, the pain and disorientation made her drift, leaving her unsure whether the light waking her in the morning, and the cold rousing her to shuddering consciousness at night, were hours or days apart. 

There was a metal bucket beside her.  She didn’t know how it had got there – whether it or she had arrived first – only that it had water in it.  Uncertain whether it was suitable to drink, she tentatively tested it whenever she was thirsty, passing cautious drops from fingertips to tongue.  She used it sparingly, as she had no idea if the bucket would be refilled once it was empty.  There was no food…or perhaps there had been, and she just didn’t remember it?  She felt too sick to eat anyway.

She knew there was a reason for her being here, but couldn’t recall what it was.  She had no idea who her anonymous captors were.  Square jaws and neat haircuts, cufflinks and tiepins, gun holsters showing when their jackets swung open.  She supposed she was meant to be frightened, but was too far-gone to care about anything but the longing for gentle hands to lift her out of the cold and wet, support her pounding head, lay her tenderly on a dry mattress, and cover her chilled body with a soft blanket. 

She opened a swollen eye and observed the first blade of light carving through the darkness, illuminating one neoprene-shod foot.  Sun-up.  Soon its heat would arrive, putting a stop to the uncontrollable shivering that tortured her night-time hours, eventually bringing welcome warmth to the metal at her stiff and sore back during the afternoon.  Contemplating reaching for a scoop of water from the bucket, she found she lacked the energy to lift her arm.  She licked her dry lips, and drifted again…

****

Awakening.  The sun had moved.  Full daylight now.  The prison was already hot and close.  Crickets called unceasingly until her ears rang with the rhythmic reverberation.  Barely able to open her heavy eyes, peering from under her lashes, she was startled to focus on the gleam of an unusual belt buckle in a shaft of sunlight, shiny shoes squelching footprints in the slimy dirt of the damp floor.  Alarmingly close voices murmured right above her, but she couldn’t look up at the faces without tilting her head, and moving was simply not an option if she didn’t want to pass out again.  Were they discussing her?  Her fuddled brain struggled to make sense of it.

“Any idea yet?”

“None.”

“Definitely no ID?”

“Nothin’…”

“And she was where?”

“On the fucking grass, man!  Trying to prise the basement window open!”

“Shit…”

“One of the ones that got away, do you think?”

“Dressed like that?  Anyway, if you got away, would you come back?”

“I guess not.”

“So, what’s your explanation?  She just kayaked past in the dark?”

“I don’t know…”

“That’s the end of the canal!  One way in, one way out.  You’ve got to mean it to go right up there.  What was in the kayak?”

“A map of that spit of land and the channels around it.”

“Nothing else?”

“No sir, Mr Logan; we’ve had it apart.  You think she’s a cop?”

“With no back-up, no radio, no gun?  She’s no cop…but she had to have a reason to be there – and she hasn’t said a thing?”

“Floyd hit her a coupla times…probably a bit hard.  He panicked!  We both did!”

“What’d he hit her with?”

“Butt of his gun.  She’s been days here like that.  Hasn’t moved.  Got a pulse, but it’s weak.  I ain’t sure she’s really conscious any more.”

“Jesus…  This is a big fucking problem!  I hope Floyd knows that.”

“Yeah, he does.”

“Look…here’s the deal; whoever she is, just get rid of her.”

“What – “

“Wait until it gets dark, chuck her in the trunk, drive her somewhere, and dump her.”

“Where?”

“I couldn’t give a shit.  Far away from here.  You and Floyd created this goddam problem, you can fix it.  I want her gone, tonight…ok?”

“Yeah, man…yeah, ok.”

“Good.  And we won’t speak about this again.”

“Sure thing, Mr Logan.”

“Oh, and Tyler?”

“Yessir?”

“Coveralls and gloves, yeah?  Burn them when you’re through…and not near the body, right?”

“Understood.”

“Just get it done, man.  No fuck-ups…and no one need ever know.”

****

Her body lifted, torso flopping heavily down a wide back, hard swell of a shoulder digging uncomfortably against her pelvis, pressure in her hanging head pulsing and building agonisingly.  A swinging trail of glutinous, acidic vomit escaped one corner of her mouth as she tried to beg to be righted before her brain exploded.  Carried swiftly from her prison, she could feel a breeze on her exposed skin, and hear the unmistakeable rustling of dry leaves in what must be tree canopy above.  Behind her, she heard the clatter of the bucket being lifted, and the gush of the water emptying out, presumably across the floor, washing away any evidence of her presence there.  The blood flow returning to her bruised and numb buttocks made them burn and itch like chilblains, nerve endings leaping.  She tried to speak again, but all that escaped her lips was another bubble of sticky saliva, and no sound.

When she next awoke, it was to perceive movement; the rocking motion of vehicular travel along an uneven road surface inducing the uncontrollable urge to vomit once more.  One monumental effort to roll onto her side lest she choke resulted in further loss of consciousness from the exertion.

A feeling of flying – delicious weightlessness during which even the unbearable pressure in her head seemed to lighten for a moment – before the sharp and winding trauma of a hard landing on unyielding ground.  Her stiff limbs screamed at the impact. 

She must be rolling, as grit filled her slack mouth, dust compacted her nostrils, and sharp stones and vegetation scratched and sliced at her uncovered skin.  Suddenly, a greater agony than any she’d experienced so far – a million needles inserting themselves into her from chest to hips.  What new horror was this?  She tried to open her eyes, but they were gummed shut with Lord only knew what vileness.  Presently, she understood she was finally, mercifully still.  The tumbling, tightening terror was over, but a fresh torture seemed just beginning.  The forest of sharp points made their deeply embedded presence aggressively known at the minutest physical twitch.  Such was its rigidity, whatever material now bound her restricted her ability to breathe deeply.  Unable to draw in sufficient oxygen, it didn’t take long to lose her fragile grip on consciousness once more…

LEAVING

Once he was well enough to sit up, and could dispense with the itchy, uncomfortable oxygen tube that rubbed the tops of his ears and made his upper lip sweat, his mother, pale and grim, placed a box of salvaged personal items onto his lap; pitifully little to indicate three lives lived in the destroyed building.

Photograph albums, mostly ruined.  One leather-bound folder was the baby’s album, with a two-page spread for each month of the child’s first year.  Only one page of pictures was completed: in hospital, coming home, meeting his bigger cousins, being sniffed by the curious dog and everybody laughing. 

One page… 

Plenty of time to fill those plastic sleeves with his son’s first smile, first jar of baby rice, first roll over on the rug before the fireplace, first attempts at crawling, first cruising forays around the furniture in preparation for those first magical unsupported steps.  Plenty of time…

He stacked the other albums to one side of the cardboard box, unopened.  Not yet.  Later. 

Wedding picture still in its frame, glass broken, photograph beneath bubbled and rippled with the heat, but still recognisably them.  It had been on Jo’s dressing table in the bedroom, next to the mirror where she’d used to sit and brush her long hair.  The bedroom…where his wife and son had been trapped when the wildfire did its terrible worst.  How was it fair that this picture had survived when they had not?  He stacked the photograph against the albums, its broken face hidden from his sight. 

He assumed there was nothing else of note in the box.  He retrieved a pair of his spurs, metal blackened, leather straps burnt away: useless.  Beneath them was a small wad of folded tissue.  He bunched it in his fist, irrationally angry.  Had someone thought these shabby, boxed remains of a once-happy life were trash?  He was about to discard it atop the remains of his untouched, congealed dinner on the tray-table over the bed, when his clenching fingers detected a hard centre in the ball of softness.  He unpicked the layers and discovered Jo’s wedding ring, cleaned and polished.  It sat small and shiny in the centre of his calloused palm.  His mother shifted nervously in the plastic chair next to the bed.  Before he thought too deeply about it, he pushed the small ring onto his left little finger.  It stuck at the knuckle, then slid down and sat comfortably against his own wedding band.  He wasn’t certain, but thought he detected a slight lessening of tension in his mother’s erect form.  She made no comment, so neither did he.  He moved his fingers to click the two rings together, then nodded once and continued with the box. 

He withdrew another item: one partially melted baby bootee.  His body spasmed, and the tiny shoe fell from his trembling fingers.  Jo had bought them even though he’d said it was crazy, the kid’d be too small to wear them for six months or more.  She’d laughed, agreed, insisted, and he’d put them in the cart with the sardonic observation that they really didn’t have to buy every stitch of clothing to see the kid through from kindergarten to college before it was even born.  She’d pouted playfully and flounced off with as much sass as a girl can manage at eight months’ gone.  Dumb idea or not, she’d got her way, of course.  They’d bought the bootees and countless other unnecessary items too.  All gone now.  A waste.  All of it a waste.  The sweet little shoes his beautiful boy would never grow into.  The empty pages of a baby album that would never be filled.

His voice remained a hoarse croak, his vocal chords damaged, but he managed to whisper, “I can’t look at this now, Momma.  Maybe keep it…you know…for sometime later…?”

They made brief, significant eye-contact, and his mother slid the box off the bed onto the floor, pushing it out of sight.  Once he knew it was gone, he felt able to take a breath.  His chest still hurt, his throat hurt, his eyes hurt, his mind, his heart, his guts, his soul…

His mother was speaking, hesitantly, “Vernon was asking what you want done with the damaged land?”

Gage thought of his brother-in-law; big, solid, dependable – a man of action, not words.  While everyone else wrung their hands and fretted over the best thing to do, Vernon got his head down and worked the problem. 

“Tell Vern to decide.  He and Jan’ll do the right thing.”

His mother forced a prim smile, and patted his bandaged forearm condescendingly with soft fingers.  Did she truly expect him to give a shit about the farm?  What did it matter?  Vernon could run it without him.

She persisted, “And soon you can come home to us while you decide…what’s…next for you…”

He closed his prickling eyes and eased his sore body carefully back against the propped pillows, whispering, “I told you, Momma, I can’t think about it now.”

His mother pursed her lips disapprovingly, took a breath, and counselled patiently, “Gage, you’re twenty-nine years old.  You might live until you’re ninety.  Refusing to acknowledge that you have the good fortune of a future will not bring Joelle or Ryan back.  When Daddy died, did I decide my life was over?  I miss him every day, and I’m sure you do too, but we didn’t make him sick, any more than we made that fire roll through our land!  What just happened was awful, cruel, unjust – but it’s not your fault – “

“It is!”  His damaged voice cracked and squeaked like a pubescent boy’s as he wailed, “I could’ve got them out of the house!  I should’ve – “

The fury of his mother’s retort shocked him into silence.  She pounded her fists manically on the metal rail around the hospital bed, “Shoulda, woulda, coulda!  Stop this, Gage!  Stop hiding!  You have to deal with what is, not what might have been!  It’s too late, Honey, you can’t change it!  You have to think about what comes next!”

Next.  He grunted humourlessly.  There was no next.  Next had vanished in the split second of that explosion.  There was only the unbearable misery of Now.

****

He tried, and not only to please his mother.  He understood he was twenty-nine, not ninety-nine; that life would continue, and he must find a way to live it tolerably well.  The months ground interminably on, but the guilt at his survival refused to abate.  If anything, it deepened the more he endeavoured to push it away by keeping busy.  Gradually, his health improved, and he became stronger, his natural physicality returning to almost what it had been before the fire.  He turned thirty.  It didn’t feel like a milestone – more a headstone.  Thirty years’ old: no wife, no family, nothing to look forward to but more of the tormenting same as he’d endured for the last nine months.  Slowly, he began to blame the farm for everything, as if it was responsible for preventing his full recovery.  He dreaded waking up in his lonely bed, listening to the morning sounds of Janice’s happy brood beyond his bedroom door.  He resented the chores that became more meaninglessly onerous with every day.  Finally, he decided if the hurt wouldn’t leave him, he must leave it instead.

A tent, a sleeping bag, some clothes, his hunting knife, his father’s fishing rod – plus the practical stuff; pots, pans, cutlery, headtorch, shotgun, axe, toolkit.  Right down one end of his rucksack, wrapped in a towel, the rippled wedding photograph and his son’s half-melted bootee.  He didn’t tell anyone he was taking those.  His mother presented him with a packet of plain postcards and exhorted him to write.  Janice gave him a small, framed photograph of them all on the porch steps; Vernon like a huge, benevolent Buddha in the centre, a grinning toddler on each knee, and his ever-faithful Blue-Heeler, Lacey, lying at his feet.  Gage’s mother sat on one side, holding a photograph of his father in her lap.  His little sister was on the other, beaming proudly, slim fingers curled around her husband’s bulging bicep.  Gage had smiled, and playfully pinched his sister’s arm, “It’s a long vacation, Janny.  I’m hardly gonna forget what y’all look like.”  He’d noticed the quick, nervous glance pass between husband and wife.  Had they decided he was never coming back? 

Truck packed, he kissed the chubby faces of his gorgeous little nieces, patted the dog’s soft head, hugged his mother tight, cupped his already-crying baby sister’s cheek in one palm, and clasped his brother-in-law’s mighty shoulder with the other, trying to grin.

“Back before you know it,” his mouth smiled, but his forever-damaged voice cracked over the words.

He got in the truck fast, and drove away waving and honking the horn as if he were embarking on the best and most-exciting adventure ever, when really what he was doing was running away.

In the rearview mirror, he could see his mother wiping her eyes with a blue handkerchief.  The barking dog and waving babies started after the truck, running into the clouds of dust thrown up by his departure.  His brother-in-law raised one massive arm in farewell, gently folding the sobbing Janice against his chest with the other.  They’d be all right without him.  They had Vern to take care of them.

****

He drove for three days on two stale sandwiches and four cups of coffee, only pulling off the road for gas or to find a secluded spot to hole-up for the night.  The weight of nameless anxiety pressed upon him as if he was being buried alive, the tightness in his chest leaving him struggling to manage a deep breath.  He spent more time with his eyes glued to the rearview mirror than he did watching the road in front of him.  What if he kept driving to the ends of the earth and it made no difference?  Might he just as well have stayed home surrounded by people who treasured him, and whom he cherished just as fiercely?  He knew he was a baleful presence in their contented midst.  He was well-aware that interacting with him in his current state pained his mother, upset Janice, worried Vernon, and confused his small nieces.  Hell, he even made the animals edgy!  Stand brooding too long in the stables and he caused the horses to turn in agitated circles, trying to evade whatever malignance pulsed unbidden from him.  He wanted to purge himself of the rawness of this guilty grief so he could return home freer, lighter, better able to participate in normal family life with his previous good humour.  When she looked at her adult son, was it paranoid to think he could see disappointment in his mother’s previously proud eyes?  Was he no longer the man she’d raised him to be?  The idea he was letting everyone down stung him.  Had they all breathed a sigh of relief as his truck turned down the curve of the driveway and disappeared from sight?

He was looking in the rearview mirror again, the bulging eyes of the hunted staring back at him from a gaunt, prematurely aged face he barely recognised as his own.  Abruptly, with a clarity of reasoning he’d been lacking for so long, he saw what he must do.  Slamming on the brakes, he brought the truck to such a sudden halt that the seatbelt tugged sharply across his collarbone, and left a red weal at the base of his neck.  He dived out as if the vehicle were an action-movie prop set for imminent destruction, yanked his rucksack after him, slammed the door, and plunged down the opposite bank towards a river curling like a ribbon of mercury through the valley below. 

Despite his blundering urgency, it took over half an hour of quad-shredding strides through thigh-deep grass to reach the bank.  Panting, sweating, he collapsed to his knees and scooped handfuls of the icy mountain meltwater, slurping with impatient need.  Thirst slaked, heart hammering with exertion, shuddering uncontrollably with what could only be fear, he fumbled the rolled towel from the bottom of his bag and spilled its precious cargo onto his dusty lap.  The photograph: blackened, rippled, ruined.  One tiny shoe his son had never worn: mostly melted, no good to anyone.  Why had he attached such significance to these two items?  He had sentimental possessions at home, deliberately left in his mother’s safekeeping because he couldn’t bring himself to look at them, and yet he’d insisted on carrying the past with him as surely as if he was still on the farm and steeling himself to gaze upon the patch of scarred and empty land where his family home had been.  He clicked the two wedding rings together as if rubber-stamping his radical decision, took an item in each hand, strode into the centre of the freezing, shallow river, and released both from his trembling fingers into the fast-flowing current. 

For a while he could detect them, bobbing along with the passage of the water.  Then he realised he could no longer make out the little shoe, and wasn’t sure whether the light was reflecting off the shiny surface of the photograph, or simply bouncing off the water where the picture had just been.  He squinted into the rising sun, straining to focus, gradually accepting they were irretrievably gone.

He sloshed back to the bank, tugged at his boots and emptied a gush of water from each, peeled off his saturated socks and wrung them out, then knelt barefoot at the water’s edge like a pilgrim before a shrine, and cried the way he’d longed to since that horrific September night stole his beloved wife and beautiful boy.

By the time he crested the hill and arrived back at the truck, the sun was high, the crickets in full crackling cry, and mid-morning heat haze shimmered before his swollen eyes.  He slumped in the hot truck and caressed the thin gold band around the little finger of his left hand.  Then he sat up purposefully, pushed the key into the ignition and pulled away, tyres spurting loose gravel as they sought purchase on the weather-eroded surface.

****

It was liberating to be free of the constant demands of the ranch.  He’d barely ventured more than a couple of hundred miles from home his entire life.  Born and bred to be a farmer, he was tethered to the land tradition dictated must pass from one generation of Rutters to the next.  He didn’t resent that; indeed, until a few months ago, had never doubted his willingness to shoulder the burden.  Having to face the increasing likelihood that the Rutter name would die with him had consequently hurt more than he could reasonably explain, as if he’d failed the intrepid and hard-working generations who’d gone before.  At least the family tree would survive through his baby sister.  Janice may be a Reynolds by marriage, but Rutter blood flowed in her veins.  His rambunctious little nieces were now the future of the farm.  The purpose of Gage’s life had certainly changed the night of the fire, but he was determined to rediscover a reason to draw breath every day…otherwise, what was the point?  He might as well find the nearest canyon-edge, and drive straight off the side.

He decided to go somewhere completely new to him.  Already into his third decade on the planet, and he’d never so much as seen the beach, let alone felt warm sand between his bare toes, or swum in the ocean.  Travelling ever-further from the only home he’d known, he concluded he felt mostly ok.  Not excited, or delighted, or fascinated, or adventurous.  Just ok.  A tentative peace settled over his embattled soul, and he tried to accept things for what they were, rather than what he yearned for them to be.  Not that it was easy to be a stranger out here on the road.  Extreme embarrassment at the stares his terrible burns and damaged voice attracted in gas stations, diners, and stores made him actively seek out the lonelier places, the emptier routes, and voluntarily pitch camp rather than check into Motels.  He didn’t stop and visit the towns he passed through unless he needed supplies, or the weather deteriorated and he craved a warm, dry night in a proper bed, a decent shower, and somewhere to do his laundry.

It got hot.  Gage was no stranger to working in the 40ºC heat of the Western midsummer, but was adapted to the thin, dry air of the high plains.  He found himself quickly drained by the unremitting humidity of the sticky South.  He lost weight pouring sweat all day, filling himself up on water alone, and stopping too infrequently for meals because he couldn’t bear the feel of anything but shorts and sandals on his overheating body, and hated the horrified double-takes when he got out of the truck bare-chested, and people clocked the unsightly scars traversing his left-hand side from forehead to shin.  Over the past couple of fragile years, he’d voluntarily withdrawn from gawking, nudging society to the point where he was now accustomed only to his indulgent mother, easy-going Vernon, caring Janice, his cheeky little nieces, and mile upon mile of nothing but cows and horses, grass and sky.  Most folks probably wouldn’t notice the detail of a soft exchange between husband and wife in a diner, as their toddlers smeared more ice-cream across their cherubic faces than they ever got into their rosebud mouths – but Gage found he couldn’t tune stuff like that out, no matter how hard he tried.  It was as if his deprived consciousness craved this gentle normality.  Helplessly compelled to drink in every nuance of intimate human interaction with the desperation of a hot horse slurping at a water trough, Gage sometimes felt himself going so crazy with loss and longing he wanted to screw up his eyes, cover his ears, and scream at them all to stop.  Just stop.  Stop loving one another so vocally.  Stop being so obviously happy.  Stop allowing your adorable little children to beam the way his precious nieces did, their round cheeks like apples pinkening in the summer sun.  His boy had never learned to smile.  He hadn’t lived long enough. 

The only remedy for the threatening insanity was to get back on the road and concentrate unwaveringly on the boring, grey avenue of winding asphalt until the agony abated.

He drove.  It was ok.  There was enough to look at, he could croak along to the radio without anyone complaining like they did when he tried to sing at home, and if he never got where he was going, he didn’t ever have to go back, knuckle down to his inherited obligations, and forget… 

Fortunately, the United States was a vast country, but he was passing into Florida already.  Then what?  Stop, turn, and face the demons that clearly still pursued him despite his best efforts to be rid of them?  He didn’t want to have to make up his mind, but he also knew he was rapidly running out of road.

 

BODY

Late afternoon on a deserted stretch of highway, perpetual heat haze shimmering in front of the truck until the whole panorama turned to liquid before his blurring eyes.  He swigged the last of the water from his plastic bottle and tossed it onto the seat beside him.  All he seemed to do down here was drink, sweat, and pee.  He needed to go again now, but wasn’t about to make the same mistake as earlier.  Out of the truck with no one around, a carload of girls had gone by as soon as he’d begun to urinate, squealing from the windows and honking the horn.  Some guys probably would have found it funny, but Gage wasn’t in the frame of mind to deal with women catching sight of his penis and passing vocal judgement upon it, even from a speeding car.

At the next likely-looking exit, he turned off the highway and down a dusty track running perpendicular to it, bumping along for a hundred yards or so until he was certain no one could see him from the road.  He got out of the truck and mooched to the edge of the scrubby undergrowth.  As he stood there, peeing forcefully, he realised the rushing sound he could hear wasn’t tyres on the highway or wind in the trees.  It was too constant and rhythmic, waxing and waning with the predictability of waves breaking on a shore!  Over the past few weeks, Gage had discovered he very much liked the beach.  He’d spent many of his recent hours just sitting on the sand and staring at the sunlight sparkling on the moving water, hypnotised by it in the same way the scudding clouds in the huge sky of home used to capture his imagination as a small child.  He’d wonder where the shapes had been, and where they were going.  He thought the same about the waves he watched roll in.  Where had they begun, and what submerged secrets had they passed over on their journey to break on the shore before his sandy feet?

Bladder emptied, he stepped back onto the road and only then realised he’d managed to pee onto his own uncovered toes.  Gross.  And he’d finished all his water so he couldn’t even rinse them.  That decided him; he was sitting down too much for someone usually so physically active anyway.  He wound up the windows, locked the truck, slid the keys into his pocket, and marched briskly in the direction of the rushing sound, sandals slapping and kicking up puffs of dust. 

The track stopped abruptly.  He could hear the sea, and catch glimpses of twinkling blue through the bushes, but there was no clear path between this disused road and the ocean.  Cheated of the sensory pleasure of cool water on his hot and dirty feet, Gage prowled back and forth along the hedgeline seeking a way through, eventually deciding he’d have to make one.  Wriggling as carefully as he was able, trying to avoid scratching his half-naked body on protruding branches, he corkscrewed himself out onto a spit of coral and rock, a light dusting of white sand creating a beach no more than ten feet long, lapped by the lazy ebb-tide.  Gage grinned with satisfaction at having achieved his objective, flicked off his sandals, and paddled back and forth in the shallows, appreciating the childlike diversion of playing in the sea by himself.  Squelching from the water and enjoying the wet sand squidging between his toes, he pottered unhurriedly back up the beach to retrieve his shoes, absorbed in picking up and examining shells, and skimming the occasional stone.  Back at the jutting spit of rock, he jammed his flip-flops into the pockets of his shorts, and climbed the few feet to stand atop it and look around.  To the other side of the rock was a much smoother half-moon of sand, at the opposite end of which was a large and fine-looking villa on an open area of lawn, ringed by stands of swaying palm trees.  Gage regarded the house with a twinge of jealousy.  What must it cost to purchase a home of that size and grandeur in such a secluded location, with its own extensive stretch of beautiful beach?  Probably more money than he’d see in a lifetime.  As with all the high-quality houses he’d passed on the southern-Florida leg of his extended sojourn, it was all closed up for the boiling off-season – storm shutters down, no vehicles on the drive, no furniture on the terrace, a cover across the pool.

As Gage stood and stared with unconcealed envy at the empty mansion and, what he really coveted, a gorgeous beach of his very own, he realised there were tracks across the otherwise-pristine sand.  They came out of the undergrowth five hundred yards down the beach from the house, curved around in a snake of trodden sand for only ten yards or so, and reentered the undergrowth a mere twenty feet from where he was standing.  His first thought was that it might be a sea-crocodile, finding a place to hole up and wait for some unsuspecting food to scuttle by…but closer examination from his vantage point suggested regular indentations very much like the footprints he’d just left across the secret beach behind him.  If the house was all closed up for the impending tropical summer, then who’d been in the woods that were supposed to be private?  It might be hobos looking for a quiet, shady place off the highway to get wasted and sleep the day away, or maybe an amorous couple wanting somewhere safe from prying eyes?  The footprints were above the line of deposited seaweed denoting high-water mark, so it was impossible to know how long they’d been there, but it was their location that troubled Gage.  The highway was bordered on both sides by thick vegetation, meaning that whoever left the footprints had willingly fought their way through perhaps a quarter mile of dense growth from roadside to beach, only to walk the shortest distance along it and dive straight back into the woods again.  What was the point of that?  If you were looking for a place to hunker down out of sight and swig your liquor unmolested, you’d only need to get a few feet into the hedge to be completely obscured from passing cars.  If you were wild with passion for your latest girl, you’d hardly take the risk of her ardour waning by dragging her on a jungle trek, when a quick squeeze under the dense bushes right by the roadside would give you all the privacy you needed.  The incongruity of those unexplained footprints bothered Gage sufficiently for him to decide on a little uncharacteristic trespassing of his own.  A landowner himself, he usually greatly-respected the sanctity of other people’s property.  He therefore made no negative judgement as he slid down the other side of the rock onto the private beach and found regimented lines of upright stakes marching at intervals from trees to waterline, swags of barbed wire strung between them: a physical barrier denoting the boundary.

From down here on the sand, the dents in the beach were obviously two sets of footprints.  Gage supposed he should just let it go.  He’d sneaked through where there wasn’t a proper path, and had no business being here.  Whoever’d unrolled these swirls of vicious wire and staked them in place in the sand clearly wanted to keep people out…so he should probably take the hint and get going…?

Feeling guilty at what he was doing, Gage put on his sandals and hugged tight to the treeline, gingerly lifting his long legs carefully over the fencing.  Old links of partially broken stakes and severely rusted wire were scattered haphazardly among the trees, dislodged during the last storm season and obviously not included in a clean-up along this barely visited stretch of shoreline.  He picked his way cautiously between them, anxious not to get caught on the razor-sharp barbs.  Where the footsteps penetrated the undergrowth, the land dropped to a steep gulley, which then climbed up a shallower bank back towards the highway.  As he’d suspected, he certainly couldn’t see the road from where he now stood; the cover was too dense.  He also couldn’t see his truck, which he knew was a very short distance away to his right.  Why come here?  For what?  A hard, hot, uncomfortable trudge from the roadside, through the jungle of foliage, down the shallow opposite bank, across the gulley, up this much-steeper hill, and onto a beach they left metres later?  Gage wiped his wrist across his sweating forehead, and sighed.  Was he simply thankful to have something else to occupy his mind apart from fire, loss, disfigurement, and indefinable worries of a hopeless future?

His roaming gaze absently followed one particular tangle of the old, ripped-up fence.  It curled strikingly like a backcombed quiff, affixed stakes hanging artistically in the air at intervals as if they were roman numerals on a giant clock-face.  Abruptly, the sweeping swirl suddenly disappeared down the forested slope, the wooden pickets stabbing at an extreme angle into the bank suggesting they braced a weight lower down, out of sight.  Curious, he padded over to the trail of wire, squatted to prevent himself tumbling headfirst, gripped one of the firmly embedded posts in his fist, and craned over the edge.

Directly beneath, so close he could almost touch them, the soles of two little shoes pointed up the bank towards him.

****

Gage started, slipped, instinctively grabbed at the fence to steady himself, and squawked in pain as a knot of sharp wire pierced his palm.  Unbalanced, he thudded onto his side in the sandy dirt, hurt hand held protectively against his stomach.  From where he now lay, he could see tanned female legs extending from the shoes and down the bank.  Mercifully, her head and shoulders were obscured by overhanging bushes, but he could clearly see that the barbed wire wound several times around the body, encasing the wet-suited figure from ribs to hips.  Gage rubbed a thumb over the single throbbing lump in the centre of his own palm as he gaped in dismay at the intense purple circles of dried blood around each of the numerous puncture wounds, shockingly bright against the pale yellow of the long-sleeved rash vest.  A surfer drowned at sea and swept ashore, tangling in the wire as waves battered the land?  But the last extreme weather event with a tide capable of depositing a body this far up the beach would have been months ago, during the previous hurricane season.  In such oppressive heat, decomposition would surely happen fast, and this body clearly hadn’t yet spent sufficient time in the gulley for the process to advance – so what the hell had he just found, a goddam murder victim?

Gage’s insides spasmed with the shock.  He rolled his shivering, terrified body onto forearms and knees, and vomited a puddle of watery bile onto the parched sand, which instantly absorbed the moisture to leave only a bubbling crust on the surface.  He rocked back onto his heels and dragged a shaking palm across his lips.  He needed to calm down and reason this out.  He had to raise the alarm – but where?  Clearly, the closest house was empty.  He had a cellphone, but didn’t stop in Motels often enough to ensure he kept the battery charged.  By the road signs he’d passed, he was roughly midway between two small settlements – and knew he was at least twenty minutes’ drive from the one he’d just left.  He could go back there and ask someone for assistance, but the cops would require basic information.  Willing or not, he had to examine the body to at least report approximate age and other such relevant details.  There could be a wallet or purse down in that gulley holding the key to her identity.  It struck him she could even have a working cellphone on which he could call for help!  Spurred on by this remote possibility, Gage edged down the slope until he was level with the body, apprehensively pushing aside the greenery hiding her face.  One involuntary sob escaped him as he saw her long, blonde hair trailing across the forest floor, tangled with twigs, and clumped with congealed blood.  As Gage pushed a large branch away, a lock of snagged hair looped free and curled around his wrist.  He recoiled in horror, shaking his hand frantically, body shuddering.  It was how Joelle’s hair had felt; silky, smooth, and soft, slipping deliciously across his bare skin.  He retched again, but his stomach was empty.  He spat repeatedly, the vile-tasting phlegm sticking to his dry lips.  Taking deep breaths, getting the burgeoning panic under shaky control, he crawled back to her side and rubbed at the film of compacted blood, sand, and soil coating her face.  To his astonishment, as his faltering fingers wiped the revolting mask from her mouth, the tip of a swollen tongue protruded, and attempted to moisten the cracked and filthy lips.

 

She was ALIVE!

ALIVE

Mind utterly blank, frozen with fear, Gage gradually realised he had to do something other than slump and stare at this dreadful sight.  Not knowing if she could hear or understand him, he nevertheless stroked her hair gently with his grimy left hand, and whispered in his almost-vanished voice, “It’s ok, it’s ok,” but of course it wasn’t…and he needed to decide what to do, quickly.  His fingers groped for her pulse.  Faint; more tentative flutter than confident beat.  He had no idea if moving her was wise, only that he couldn’t abandon her here to go for help.  A twenty-minute drive back to the nearest houses, further delay awaiting the arrival of the cops or an ambulance, directing them here – it would all take time she doubtless didn’t have.  To save her, he had to do this himself. 

A rough plan was taking shape in Gage’s mind.  He tugged his bunch of keys from his pocket.  There was a multitool on his keyring.  He kept stroking, comforting; whispering, “I’m gonna cut you free.  Don’t worry, Sugar, I’m here to rescue you.”

Gage fumbled his penknife off the keyring and flicked out the most-likely attachment, distractedly wiping at his now-constant flow of agitated tears so he could focus on what he needed to do.  Steadying trembling hands and churning guts, he bent to his task, using the woefully inadequate knife to slice back and forth on the rusting wire until it weakened enough to give way across the fulcrum of the blade.  He tried to ensure minimal movement of the metal, first snapping each end where it joined onto the fence, and only then attempting to cut her free in sections, sliding the evil spikes from her injured skin as he went.  It took forever.  His legs throbbed from kneeling so long on the uneven ground.  Sharp pains shot through his feet as he braced them against the camber of the slope to stop himself slipping.  His stomach muscles were in knots with the effort of holding his body stable above her, keeping his movements small and controlled.  His neck and shoulders ached with the continuous sawing motion, back and forth with the skinny blade across the rusty wire until it mercifully surrendered and snapped.  Occasionally, he wasn’t quick enough to catch the rebounding links between his fingers, and the barbs plunged further into her skin, making her whimper in pain.  At these moments, Gage instantly stopped cutting, and caressed her cheek with his hot hand.  When she felt his touch, her eyelids fluttered, but didn’t open…and she didn’t speak.

Completing his removal of the wire embedded in her front, Gage steeled himself to lift the near-lifeless woman.  He slid a palm under the small of her back, and supported her blood-caked head with the other, “I’m gonna sit you up, ok?  I need to do your back now.  I’ll be as careful as I can, I promise.  You’re doing real well.  It’ll soon be over.”  Gage wasn’t sure whether he was telling her, or himself.

Slowly lifting her to rest against his chest, head on his shoulder, gently easing the lengths of wire one by one from her back, strands of her hair tickled his bare skin and a vivid memory assailed him.  His laughing wife ambushing him in the hayloft of the biggest barn when she knew they’d be alone, flying blonde locks gleaming like threads of gold in the shafts of sunlight; that same glossy curtain falling forward and obscuring her face as his fingers pressed into the naked flesh of her hips, rocking her with the rhythmic upward thrusts of his pelvis as she straddled him.

This was the closest he’d been to a woman since…since…  Suppressing the inappropriate image with difficulty, Gage inched the final foot of cut wire free of her skin, feeling again for the pulse.  Flooded with relief to still detect the irregular beat beneath his clammy fingers, he held her body to his for a moment more.  Weakened with pain, blood loss, probable dehydration, and heaven only knew what else, if she were now to lose her battle, at least she’d sense his presence in this sinister place.  Even as he cradled her, his keen eyes assessed the opposite bank, knowing he had to climb it with the dead weight of the unconscious girl in his arms.  He had a fairly good idea where the truck was, but couldn’t waste valuable time and energy staggering about in the undergrowth getting his bearings.  How to pick a target and aim straight for it…?  Of course, the remote locking!  When activated, it flashed the indicators and blipped the horn.  If he put his keys in his hand before he started off, he could repeatedly operate the mechanism and use the sound of the horn to navigate directly back to the truck!  He held the key aloft, double-clicked the button, and was rewarded by a satisfyingly loud honk closer to his current position than he could have hoped.

He slipped the keyring over his forefinger, and slid his wide palms under her buttocks, lifting her firmly against his body as one might carry a sleeping child, trying to hook her legs over his hips to spread the weight.  He pivoted from sore knees to an unsteady crouch, counted to three in his head, and pushed upward with every ounce of latent energy in his quads and hamstrings.  Overbalancing, and tottering sideways down the steepness of the bank, his immediate thought was that he would tumble headlong and flatten her underneath him!  When by some miracle he remained upright, he felt brave enough to use the remaining slope to his advantage, breaking into a cautious downhill trot to build momentum for the upward climb.  As his feet hit the gulley floor, his legs drove hard, muscles humming with the effort, striding as wide as he could up the opposite bank to get to the top before his strength failed.  A couple of times, his dusty feet twisted in his flip-flops.  Senses sharpened by coursing adrenaline; rather than hesitate, slip, and falter, he had the presence of mind to leap instantly onto the other leg and keep powering away.  By the time he reached the top of the bank, he was dripping sweat and heaving for breath, spent legs quivering.  He paused, panted loud and deep, and blipped the button in his palm once more – another loud honk a few metres further to his right.  Turning sideways to protect her as much as possible from the scratching branches, he plunged into the hedge and pushed with all his remaining might against the springy undergrowth, like a football player driving for a touchdown, crashing onto the track feet from his vehicle, staggering forwards and thudding his back against the truck’s hot bodywork.

He scrabbled the passenger door open, flopping awkwardly onto the edge of the seat, holding her tight to his chest with one shuddering arm and thrashing blindly behind him with the other to push the detritus of drinks bottles and food wrappers into the footwell.  Fingertips at full stretch, he plucked a towel from the chaotic pile in the back, flattening it out across the front bench seat.  Although his shattered legs nearly gave way beneath him as he forced himself to stand, he struggled upright, turned, and leant over the seat with her injured head cupped in his palm like a newborn.  He placed her on the towel with tender care, scuttled round to the driver’s side, gripped its top corners and used it to slide her comatose form across the worn leather until he was confident he could close the passenger door.  He needed her to be in the front so he could monitor her heartbeat and breathing as he drove.  Given how faint her pulse already was, and following the extreme trauma of his rough and ready rescue attempt, Gage was convinced he’d shortly be pulling over at the side of the highway to start CPR.  He just prayed he’d get nearer some useful help before that happened.  Pulling his camping pillow from the back, he gently supported her head, slithered onto the driver’s seat, plonked the pillow in his lap, and eased her down.  Did the tension in her broken little body lessen as her head lolled across the cushion?  Fearing the worst, Gage licked his fingers and hovered them close to her lips.  The softest whisper of breath cooled the moisture on his skin.  The pulse at her neck was present, but dangerously weak.  He stroked her matted hair with his sweat-slick palm, “Hold on, baby.  Just hold on…”

Gage started the engine, rammed the truck into ‘Drive’, and hit the highway.

LOGAN 

Logan swung the car in a carelessly wide arc off the highway, and paused with unconcealed impatience at the gates for the security guy to check his ID and numberplate.

“You know it’s me, for Chrissake Charlie!”

“Doin’ my job, Mr Logan.”

“Yes, yes; a little faster, huh?  Some of us have real work to do.”

As the gates swung open before him, Logan gunned the engine aggressively.  The rear wheels span uselessly on the loose, dusty surface, then bit unexpectedly and shot him off abruptly on the diagonal.  He swore, grabbed the wheel, and wrestled it straight inches away from hitting a tree on the right-hand side of the long driveway.  Flushing with furious humiliation, he drove on without slowing or glancing back at Charlie, who was doubtless revelling in such an immediate and rib-tickling dose of karma.  What did he matter?  He was the gate-guy.  He was nobody.

Logan pulled up before the house and leapt dynamically from the air-conditioned interior of the car.  The Florida heat smacked him like a damp flannel.  The day was still, the enervating humidity already uncomfortably high even though it was barely ten a.m.

He took the shallow steps to the front door in one bound, knocked authoritatively, and was admitted without preamble into the welcome, dim coolness.  He waved away the housekeeper’s supervision and saw himself down the corridor to the Atlantic vista, turning right and pausing before the chalky limewash of the study’s tall double-doors.  He checked the knot of his tie, tugged at the cuffs of his shirt to straighten the sleeves, brushed microscopic lint from one lapel of his suit jacket, and knocked three times with respectful confidence.

“Come.”

Logan opened both doors simultaneously, considering any opportunity to make an entrance worth taking.  The boss sat on a leather couch to one side of the grandiose desk, the coffee table before him obscured by an inch-deep spread of weekend papers.  The Governor wore linen slacks, espadrilles, no socks, and an open-necked polo shirt.  Logan noted with distaste that the V of suntanned skin at his septuagenarian throat was wrinkled, leathery, and loose.  The French doors before him stood open to the rear veranda and the long, straight lawn.  Beyond that, nothing but sky and glittering sea, deep blue in the morning sunlight.  Two Golden Retrievers, legs outstretched, formed panting parentheses on the cool terracotta tiles to either side of the coffee table.  They didn’t even bother lifting their heads as Logan entered.

The boss looked up from his paper and smiled warmly, “Robert.”

“Good morning, sir.”

The Governor took in the expensive woollen suit, tightly fastened tie, highly polished shoes, and looked somewhat pained, given the mercury hovered at ninety and the humidity was already building inexorably to the inevitable late-afternoon storm.

“It’s Saturday, Robert.”

“It is, sir.”

“Do you own any casual clothes?”

Logan’s brows knitted in momentary bewilderment.  The Governor flapped his paper with a hint of frustration, and sighed, “Never mind.  Help yourself to coffee.  I’m just going through this stack.  Bill will be along shortly to discuss next week’s event.  We’ll need to run over all arrangements.  I’d welcome your insightful input.”

Logan nodded earnestly, pivoted on his heel with the formality of a soldier on parade, and marched over to the sideboard to pour himself a coffee, plopping in two cubes of sugar and stirring briskly with intense concentration on the tiny cup in his big hand.  He clipped back to the table and perched stiffly on an armchair opposite the boss, eyes scanning the various headlines he could see, trying to read them upside-down.  In the end, the Governor put him out of his misery, “Help yourself, Robert.”

“Thank you, sir – “

“Only for Heaven’s sake take off your jacket.  You’re making me feel too hot just looking at you!”

“Yessir.”

Logan stood immediately, removed his jacket, and laid it as tenderly as one might a sleeping baby over the back of the chair, before seating himself again and leaning forward to riffle through the papers.  The Governor watched him distractedly, unaware he was frowning.  Unwaveringly loyal, unquestionably obedient; without doubt the most useful and reliable employee on the entire staff, there was nevertheless something odd about Robert.

Ostensibly, one glance at the glowing resumé of Robert Christopher Logan Jnr would be sufficient to settle the digestion of even the most dyspeptically paranoid employer.  The Governor had seen a lot of himself in Robert when he’d recruited him.  Another determined, self-made individual deliberately cocking-a-snook at the established ways of doing things; elevating himself without the assistance of either wealth or social status.  Sick mother, broken home; financing his own Law degree, achieving scores his more privileged rivals would have sold a kidney for.  The Governor admired a grafter – and Robert Logan was the hardest worker he’d met since entering politics.  Everybody else coasted, and backstabbed, and brown-nosed, and operated.  They didn’t put the effort in, just blamed one another when nothing changed.  Robert rode roughshod over every convention to actually get things done.  He didn’t give a damn whether people liked him for it or not.  Robert Logan didn’t see colleagues; he saw obstacles.  Secretly, the Governor rather envied his ability to stand alone.  He’d promoted the youngster with indecent speed.  He knew elbows nudged, eyebrows waggled, and faces smirked behind his back – they thought Robert was his little boyfriend.  The Governor could only imagine what his indomitable wife of forty-three years would have to say about those rumours if she knew!  Notwithstanding the young man’s inability to relax, and his tendency to rub people up the wrong way if they so much as considered obstructing his single-minded purpose, the Governor liked the cut of Robert’s jib, the thrust of his determined character, his refusal to be cowed or beaten, his complete self-contained independence.  Just because Robert eschewed friendships and wasn’t afraid of causing offence, didn’t mean he was doing anything wrong.  Besides, ruffling feathers seemed to be a notable, electable quality in a politician these days.  He entrusted an increasing amount to Robert regardless of the whispering; gradually coming to view him as the only genuine rock in their unreliable, disingenuous world.  He didn’t consider him some sort of potential dalliance; rather the son he’d never had.  Everything about his dedicated young aide was so perfect the Governor found himself turning a deliberate blind eye to overtly-spiteful tittle-tattle, actively dismissing it as petty resentment on the part of those who’d been passed over in favour of his high-performing protégé…but at the back of his mind lurked a troubling unease.  The plain truth was that in public life, methods counted as much as results, and there didn’t appear to be a point beyond which the young lawyer would not go to carry out his remit.  Robert just didn’t seem to possess the natural off-switch that dwelt intuitively within everyone else he knew. 

The Governor realised he was staring, and returned his full attention to his paper before the younger man became aware of it.  He thought no more about the behavioural quirks of Robert Logan until he realised his employee was standing again, excusing himself, exhibiting his strange mix of deference and arrogance…and something more – surprising and uncharacteristic agitation, “Excuse me, sir.  I just need to make a telephone call.”

“Robert?”  The Governor looked up at him in kindly concern, gesturing to the newspaper rolled to a tube in Logan’s large fist, “Bad news?”

“Um…no sir.  The date, sir.  The date on the paper.  I forgot.  My mother’s birthday, sir.”

The Governor smiled, inexpressibly relieved to see Robert betraying a hint of frail humanity for once.  He never usually forgot anything.  It was funny to think of Robert having a mother – much easier to imagine him as a plastic action-figure generated by machine, rolling off the production line identical to his fellows, than picture him born of a passionate union.

“Well, can’t have that, now, can we?  You must call her straight away.  Be sure to give her my very best wishes along with yours.”

“Very kind and understanding of you, sir.”

Robert was across the office so fast his shiny shoes barely touched the ground.  The Governor waited until he was definitely alone before daring to chuckle.  Robert didn’t like being laughed at.

Study door closed quietly behind him, Logan sprinted as fast as absolute silence would allow across the wide dining room, down the steps to the sunken kitchen, through the door into the laundry, and out onto the gravel area beyond the back door where the trash cans were stored, and the boxed air conditioners hummed rhythmically as they rotated in their metal cages.  He dialled a number from memory and paced anxiously, beating his thigh distractedly with the rolled-up paper in time to the whirr of the fans until the call was answered.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.  Our unwelcome visitor is all over the local paper!  Have you seen it?”

“No…”

“Where are you?”

“At home.  It’s Saturday.”

“Well, go out and get a copy.”

“What’s it say?”

“She’s front page!  She’s a reporter.  Works at the paper, apparently.  Went home from work last Tuesday night saying something about following up a lead and – surprise, surprise – never showed for work again Wednesday morning.  No trace of her having been home, neighbours haven’t seen her since, car discovered parked off the highway opposite the Marina – “

“Shit!  What was a reporter doing poking around?”

“According to her Editor, she had a lead on a big story…and I quote: “a political exposé of State significance”…then she vanished.  His article’s implying it’s no coincidence.  What do you think about that?”

“I told you, we just walked around the side of the house and she was there!  Scared the shit out of the both of us!”

“Did you get rid?”

“Yup.”

“So, this isn’t going to come back and bite us now the cops are on the case?”

“No, we took her all the way over to – “

“Don’t tell me!  Best I don’t know.  Just reassure me it’s dealt with.”

“It’s dealt with, Mr Logan, sir.  I think she was dead before we even dumped her.  She won’t be tellin’ nobody nothin’.”

“Let’s be doubly sure, shall we?  The implication of this very sparse article is that she hadn’t seen fit to share her findings, whatever they may have been, with any of her workmates – probably didn’t want them stealing her story.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“It’s the goddam local rag!  If they had a scoop, they’d be printing it, missing colleague or not.”

“I guess so…”

“You said she was fixated on the basement?”

“Yeah, sitting on the grass trying to lever the window open.”

“Unless you knew, you wouldn’t bother with that, would you?  You’d try to get in the house, look around upstairs, maybe?  You wouldn’t start in the basement.”

“Meaning?”

“She’s either watched the house for a while, or someone’s tipped her off.  I’ve just got this feeling that, dead or not, she isn’t out of our hair yet.  We need to shut this down, fast, before another nosey reporter takes up the slack.  Know anyone in local law enforcement down here?”

“Yeah, I do, as it happens.”

“Any favours you can call in?  We need to be kept abreast of the police activity somehow.”

“Sure…I got just the guy…”

“Good.  I’d like to know how the whole ‘missing persons’ investigation is progressing.  I want to know the millisecond they find anything of note, particularly an unidentified female body in the middle of nowhere.  If you can, get inside her house and search it.  I want laptop, notebooks, memory sticks, photos –”

“Yeah, yeah.  Don’t worry.  He’s ex-military.  We served together – did some shit he ain’t going to want getting out.  I’ll be as far in with the cops as I want to get.”

“Excellent, Tyler!  You know, you constantly surprise me.  I start believing you’re useless, and then you spill a gem like that.  Incredible!”

“Thanks…I guess.  What about Floyd?”

“Tell Floyd to keep a very low profile, get on with his goddam job, and try not to think for himself.  Shit seems to happen when he does.”

“I’ll warn him.”

“See that you do.  In the meantime, I’m going to pay our uninvited guest’s Editor a visit.  She’s gotta have given him something to go on, otherwise how did he know it was ‘a political exposé’?  That particular choice of words is just a little too close to home, don’t you think?”

“Who you gonna say you are?”

Logan paused, considered, and an unsettling, vulpine smile suffused his chiselled features, “Hmmm…whaddya think…Vice Squad, maybe?  That should rattle his cage nicely…”

That made Tyler giggle like a schoolgirl, and Logan rang off with a pulse rate considerably slower than that of five minutes’ before. 

He skim-read the piece again.  He believed what he’d told Tyler Dann.  Surely, if her Editor was in possession of the juicy detail of the real story, he’d have printed every last syllable of it, and to hell with the credit owed to the investigative talents of his missing lead reporter?  Logan was almost convinced the guy didn’t know a thing – or, at least, anything he could prove.  He just had to make sure. 

MAL

Images.

Click.

Lines and lines of shots of the beaming Governor waving to supporters.  Numerous official, posed portraits.  Standard wood-panelled office, flag prominently placed, reins of State governance in a reassuringly safe and capable pair of hands.  The guy was up there with Santa Claus for universal approval and cuddly approachability.  If any of what she’d suggested last Monday night was even remotely true…!  But he couldn’t print a thing, not without proof – and he’d told her, probably rather too aggressively, that she’d struggle to obtain it.  She’d left wearing the expression that made him mad both with exasperation at her obstinacy, and delight at her spark; the face that declared, ‘Think I’m incapable, do you?  I’ll show you; you pompous, sexist old fool.’  And then she’d disappeared, and now he was powerless to do anything but stare at pictures of the State Governor of Florida, and fret ceaselessly over what he knew.  The allegations she’d unloaded during that revelatory conversation circled his head and stopped him sleeping.  Frantic with worry but desperate to act, he knew he had to do something…  Terrified, it had taken him days to decide what that something should be.  Eventually, he’d used his tin-pot paper to publish a purely factual article on the disappearance of a missing local woman, who just happened to be his Lead Reporter…oh, and the closest thing to a daughter he’d ever had.  It wasn’t much – a four-page spread to a circulation of a few thousand households – but it applied a salve of purpose to a pain the like of which he hadn’t felt since losing his darling wife to cancer five years’ before.  Looking through his open office door directly at the desk stripped bare by the investigating cops, it felt as if she’d already been erased from existence.  Everything that might be considered evidence, from polaroid photographs to notebooks and clippings, had been catalogued and carted away in bags and boxes.  There was nothing left but an empty in-tray, and a chair with the internal foam padding spilling from splits in the fabric.  He told himself the measures he was putting in place were temporary.  He held fast to the conviction she would return.  The alternative was too dreadful to contemplate.  The action he’d taken to keep her name on everyone’s lips, and her image in their minds, merely assisted the police with an enquiry which would soon and successfully result in her discovery, completely unharmed, and adorably indignant he’d ever doubted her ability to look after herself.

Glen, hastily and necessarily promoted to Lead Reporter, and trying to keep a lid on how delighted he was about it in front of his obviously bereft Editor, stuck his head around the habitually open door, “Boss?”

Mal sighed, lifted his eyes from examination of the computer screen, and tried to seem as interested as he’d usually be, “What can I do for you?”

Glen looked uncharacteristically edgy, which instantly sharpened Mal’s curiosity, “Someone to see you.  Another cop.  Different unit.”

Glen glanced behind him to where the visitor obviously waited, inched his head further into the office to ensure he was unobserved, and mouthed, “Vice Squad.”

“Vice?”  Mal’s stomach tightened.  Glen couldn’t know the significance of this, and Mal was loathe to tell him.  It had crossed his mind to give Glen the background on everything he knew and just let the energetic youngster run with it, but didn’t dare release the incendiary secret.  He was becoming increasingly more convinced he’d already lost one reporter to this story.  He wasn’t about to risk the neck of another.

He pushed at the edge of his monitor to tilt the screen away from prying eyes, tried to assume a nonchalant attitude in his chair like a man with absolutely nothing to hide, and nodded calmly to Glen, “Ok, show him in.”

Glen was turning, opening his mouth, about to address the visitor, when the tall, well-groomed man strode impatiently past him to occupy a commanding position in the centre of Mal’s worn office rug.  Glen stood in the doorway and opened and closed his mouth like a ventriloquist’s dummy, both affronted and intimidated by the stranger’s abruptness.

Mal waved a casual hand, “Thank you, Glen.  Could you close the door please?”

Still gawping at the imposing stranger, Glen stumbled backwards out of the office, shutting the door so clumsily behind him that the badly fitting glass pane rattled loudly.

Mal attempted a cautious smile and indicated the empty chair before the desk with an open palm.  The man tutted audibly, perched on the very edge of the seat as if having to accede to Mal’s wishes was a huge waste of his valuable time, flashed the tin, and snapped, “Quantick.  Vice.  Your article; it made me wonder whether you’re in possession of vital information you’re deliberately withholding.  You know that’s an offence, right?”

Mal blinked, almost as startled as Glen had been.  Wow.  This guy sure cut to the chase.  Determined not to betray a hint of disquiet, Mal leant back slowly, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, steepling his fingers, and pressing the pads firmly together to stop his hands shaking too noticeably. 

“Detective…Quantick, did you say?  My article is a compilation of all the facts we have concerning the recent disappearance of a much missed and highly valued member of the newspaper’s staff.  I’m sure you can appreciate, we couldn’t sit back and do nothing when our friend and colleague might be injured, or in danger…?  Someone could have witnessed something relevant to the police investigation.  What we printed is intended to maybe jog a memory or two.  We’re using our position to raise awareness in the community.  She’s still missing.  How can I withhold what I don’t know?”

The cop’s disconcertingly dark eyes glittered chillingly.  He said nothing.  Mal waited it out, holding his nerve, not volunteering anything more.  The silence lengthened.  Outside the door, the newsroom buzzed with talking voices, ringing telephones, clattering keyboards, chuntering printers.  Mal’s heart was whacking so hard against his ribs he was sure half the street could hear it.  The pressure inside the tiny room intensified until Mal could no longer endure it.  The first to drop his eyes, they darted compulsively back to the computer screen, focusing on the photographs of the smiling Governor.  Despite Mal’s consternation, it was a relief to look upon a cheerful face.  He delayed the inevitable moment when he’d have to meet the glacial gaze of the Vice cop once more.  One particular shot suddenly caught his eye.  For an instant, he couldn’t understand what had captured his attention so completely; it was only the Governor addressing supporters at a Tallahassee rally during his recent election campaign, finger pointing as he energetically drove home a crowd-pleasing point.  Then, he realised why the image had leapt out at him from a sea of similar pictures.  There, in the background of a photograph he’d stared at repeatedly over the last few days, was a man Mal recognised.  Unless he was very much mistaken, the figure in the shadows over the Governor’s left shoulder was Vice Squad Detective Quantick!  He tried to compare the faces without making it obvious he was flitting between man and screen.  Same hard, cold expression.  Same sensible haircut.  Identical, erect form – broad shoulders, straight back, lofted chin – it was him, no question!  Malcolm Lawrence was a hard-bitten, cynical old hack.  He’d been around the block and back again, and he didn’t spook easily.  Usually, he thrived on a good mystery; one that got him out of bed in the morning and kept him plugging on day after day when, at his time of life, he should really be doing a little more fishing for yellowtail, and a little less digging for dirt.  However, this stank worse than a dead skunk down a storm-drain.  Given the explosive secrets he’d been told, what possible reason could a Vice cop have for standing next to the State Governor on a rally podium five hundred miles away from here…unless he was undercover?  Might it ease the terrible internal pressure to blurt out everything and hope he and this cruel-eyed cop were on the same side?  Sorely tempted, instinct nevertheless held him back.  Quantick’s thorny manner pierced his reporter’s sixth sense like a wasp sting.  Until he could be absolutely sure the cop was safe to talk to, he just had to get rid of him – fast – before the guy wheedled anything out of him it might be deadly to reveal. 

Standing, pushing his chair back, Mal politely indicated the door, “Well, if there’s nothing else, Detective…?”

The cop shot up powerfully, as if he had pistons for legs, towering over Mal’s short, rotund frame, “Why is it I get the impression you’re hiding something, Mr Lawrence?”

Rendered reckless by a flash of fury, Mal parried the question with one of his own, “What’s the whereabouts of a missing reporter got to do with Vice?”

A twitch in the guy’s jaw as if he was grinding his teeth in frustration, “I assume you understand the penalty for impeding an investigation – “

“I’ve made a full statement, Detective!  We all have!”  Mal indicated the crowded office beyond his door with an expansive sweep of his arm.

The cop’s nostrils twitched as if he too had caught a whiff of Mal’s metaphorical skunk, and his upper lip curled, revealing white and even teeth, “I’m here to discuss your article, not your statement.”

The picture of innocence, Mal protested, “My article is a plea for witnesses to the disappearance of my Lead Reporter – “

“Who was working on – and I quote you – ‘a political exposé of State significance’.”

“And I repeat, Detective, because I simply do not see the connection – what does any of that have to do with the Vice Squad?”

“I am asking the questions, Mr Lawrence.  The implication of your article is that her investigation was a contributory factor in her disappearance…if not the sole cause of it!”

“Detective Quantick, my article reports the facts of her disappearance as we know them,” Mal ticked the points off on his fingers, “When I last spoke to her, What she was working on at the time, Where she was last seen…”

“The facts?”

“Yes, as I know them.  I reported what she told me.  All she told me!  She provided me with no article to print, and no evidence or proof of any allegations.  She was investigating a lead into a story.  What I printed is what I was told.  It may or may not have a bearing on her disappearance, I can’t say.  I have no information, no briefing notes, no evidence, no proof…no political story, Detective.  Nothing at all.  My story is that my Lead Reporter is missing, and we are all frantic with worry about her.”

“But someone made an allegation with a political hook?  Something ‘of State significance’?  That’s pretty specific.”

“We’d all be in court Monday through Friday if we printed every piece of salacious gossip we got told.  You can’t just believe a source.  You have to investigate.  A man in your position must know that?”

“Who were her sources?”

“I don’t know.  Confidential.  She protected her network.  Investigative journalism’s a competitive field, even amongst colleagues on the same paper…even way down here off the edge of the world!  Everyone’s looking for the career-defining scoop that’s going to catapult them to the big time.  No one releases information about what they’ve got until they’re ready to print an article.”

“And was she ready?  Where would that information be?”

“I’ve told you all I know, Detective.  Whatever she was working on would be with her computer, her notebooks…”

“I need to take a look at her desk.”

“Your colleagues have taken everything – “

“I might uncover something they missed.  I’m coming at this from a different angle.”

No kidding…  Mal gazed unblinkingly at the cop’s inscrutable features.  His heart was still going like a freight train.  Any second now, he was sure it would burst from his chest and shoot across the room like an express from a tunnel.  He watched the muscle jump in the cop’s smooth cheek, thought of the image on the computer screen, and wondered whether the guy might be as keyed-up as he was?  He took a calculated risk, beamed expansively, and said, “Well, sure, Detective!  If you feel you need to.  Anything to assist the investigation.  We just want her back, you know?  As we are always in possession of sensitive material in a newsroom, if I could just see the search warrant you’ve brought with you…?”

Mal raised his eyebrows, held out his hand, and let the question hang in the sultry air over the cluttered desk.  The stalemate lasted probably no more than three seconds, but felt like an hour.  This time, Quantick was first to crack, and Mal registered the terrifying triumph of a temporary victory.  The cop’s eyes roamed back and forth across the grubby carpet, mind obviously racing, eventually concluding his unconventional shakedown had run its course, and glaring venomously at Mal’s flushed and perspiring face, “Your ‘Uncle Buck’ routine might fool those idiots from the Sherriff’s department, but I see what’s going on here, and I don’t like it.  Be very careful, Mr Lawrence.  Obstruct me, and you’ll regret it.  I have an important job to do.  Don’t get in my way.”

He left as abruptly as he’d arrived, and Mal subsided into his chair, groaning as if he’d just gone ten rounds with Tyson.  An indecently short interval elapsed before Glen was back in the doorway, eyes shining.  Mal reflected that with a little more polish, and the guile that only experience could deliver, Glen had the makings of a fine reporter – mostly because he was a nosey little bastard.

“Boss, you ok?  What did he want?”

“Information.”

“What information?  We’ve already told the cops everything we know…?”

Ashamed at withholding the truth from Glen, Mal avoided eye contact, instead stabbing ineptly at the mouse buttons like he was playing Space Invaders, “Goddam it, Glen, how do you make a picture bigger?”

“Zoom in, Boss.  Here…” 

Glen politely elbowed him out of the way, took control, and swiftly enlarged the relevant shot.

“Who’s that, Glen?”

Glen answered with some suspicion, as if it might be a trick question, “The Governor of Florida…?”

“No, no!” Mal poked the screen with a thick, stubby forefinger, “Who’s that?”

Glen peered, gasped, recoiled from the screen to gawp at Mal as if he’d seen a ghost, “Whoa…”

“What’s the date of that photograph?  My eyesight…!  The print’s so small…”

“It says last year at the bottom there.”

“So, answer me this, Glen – what’s a local Vice cop from the Florida Keys doing standing no more’n six feet behind the Governor-elect on the podium at a prominent political rally all the way up in Tallahassee a year ago?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“No, I don’t expect you to.  The way to do this is to consider all the questions that come to mind, and seek to establish facts connected to them.  So…think, Glen.  What possible explanations could there be?”

“Um…”

“Come on, Glen!  You’re Lead Reporter now.  Step up.  Use that brain of yours.”

“Er…ok…ok…how about this?  He wasn’t a cop then, but he is now?  Maybe he worked for the Governor, and then he left…and now he’s a cop?”

“Ok, there’s a starting point.  That’s the first thing you look into.  Write it down.  Next?”

“Um…well…the other thing that springs to mind is that maybe he’s an undercover cop…but that would imply there’s something screwy going on with the Governor, or somebody who works for the Governor.  Surely that’s not likely?”

“Anything’s possible, Glen.  The longer you do this job, the more you’ll realise truth is way stranger than fiction most of the time.  That’s your next angle.  Has anyone working for the Governor in the last couple of years had reason to attract the attention of the Vice Squad?”  Mal hesitated, weighed up the risk of articulating the thought uppermost in his mind, and went for it anyway, “Maybe even the Governor himself?”

Glen looked positively scandalised, “Surely you can’t be suggesting he’s crooked or something?  He seems so…so…”

“Glen, he’s a politician.  Don’t be naïve.  Anyway, all we’re doing at the moment is compiling a list of hypotheses.  Then you’re going to go away and test them against available evidence.”

“I guess…”

“Next question?”

“He’s…he’s…not a cop?”

“Good man!”

“Well, what is he if he’s not a cop?”

“Why are you asking me?  Come on, Glen, think!”  Oh, he missed her!  He missed her nimble intellect, her fearlessness, her stubborn refusal to be deviated from her objective.  A jolt of emotional pain walloped Mal so hard in the solar plexus that he winced aloud.  Fortunately, Glen was too absorbed to notice.

“There was something about him, right?  What did you think of him, Boss?”

“I thought he was a psycho!  Why?  What are you driving at?”

Glen tapped a knuckle on the monitor, “He was like Action Man, wasn’t he?  A plastic dolly with a stick-on haircut.  Just flat-out weird…like those guys at High School who were always straight-A students, but you knew darn well it was because they were bullying the geek to copy his homework.”

Mal beamed at him in open admiration.  Getting Glen to knuckle down and concentrate that butterfly mind of his was like swimming through molasses, but the boy always got there in the end, unerringly pinpointing the one detail no one else had noticed.

“Glen, that’s it!”

“What’s ‘it’?”

“Sober suit, boring haircut, clean-shaven, deliberately invisible!  Why might that be, huh?”

Glen grinned back just as wide, “Because he doesn’t want you to remember him.”

“Exactly!  If he’s a local cop, then I’m Oprah Winfrey!”

“Ok, then who is he?”

“Who knows?  Who cares?  A Fed, maybe?  What matters is that he was in here lying and trying to intimidate information out of me about our girl.  Either he’s an undercover Fed keeping tabs on someone in the Governor’s office…or…”

“Shit – or he’s asking questions on the Governor’s behalf!”

“Yeah, that had crossed my mind too.”

“What do we do now?”

“Well, you’ve got your list, Glen.  Start working your way through it.  Don’t discount anything…but remember I won’t print a syllable we can’t prove, all right?  We don’t have the financial resources to face the Governor’s Office in court.”

“Sure thing, Mal!”

The young man scampered from the office like a beagle after a scent, and Mal slumped in his chair, trembling hands loosely gripping the edge of the desk, agile mind racing.  He couldn’t tell Glen – not yet.  What they’d just brainstormed would occupy the lad for a while, eliminating their more outlandish theories and narrowing down lines of enquiry.  It certainly wouldn’t do any harm to ensure she’d been on the right track before her disappearance, and such low-key investigation would keep Glen out of trouble for the foreseeable future.  In the meantime, Mal knew he’d have to embark upon some definitely dangerous digging of his own.  If he hadn’t been completely convinced by her story before, he sure was starting to believe her now. 

SCARRED

When she stared down at her arms, laid flat over the tight-pulled coverlet, they were dotted with dressings; small squares of wadding taped at intervals over her skin like a human chequerboard.  There was a cannula in the back of her bruised left hand, a clear tube trailing from it and looping behind her.  Craning her head back against the propped pillows, she followed the tube all the way to a swollen bag of clear liquid on a hook above the bed.  Squinting to determine what was being administered, she caught sight of a whiteboard on the wall.  Scribbled in red marker was ‘Room 5, JANE DOE’.

Jane Doe?  She was a Jane Doe?  Horrified, she tried to sit up, wriggling ineffectually within the tightly tucked confines of the bedding, slipping on the over-starched sheets.  Her limbs simply wouldn’t obey.  Her body felt encased in concrete from neck to ankles.  Attempts to lift her head off the pillows produced the same sensation as imbibing one too many Martinis.  The room tipped disconcertingly, and she was forced to temper the speed and violence of her movement, tugging gingerly on the blankets to release her legs, ease them slowly around, and stretch her toes towards the floor.  In the far-left corner of the room the bathroom door stood ajar, enabling her to see daylight outside.  This room was dark, the window-blinds closed, a single anglepoise lamp spilling an inadequate circle of dim yellow light over the nightstand and onto the floor next to the bed.

Her reaching feet found the cool linoleum.  She planted them wide apart and tipped herself forwards, sliding her aching bottom off the mattress and taking full weight on unsteady legs that felt disconnected from her body.  She raised her woozy head by degrees, anxious not to bring on a fainting fit, eyes focusing gradually on the room.

To her utter astonishment, in the shadow beyond the pool of insufficient light, a rangy man snored rhythmically in a plastic wing-backed chair.  He wore frayed jeans, scuffed sneakers, and a grubby t-shirt, so clearly wasn’t a member of medical staff keeping her under observation.  His tousled blonde hair needed a cut.  It was too long over his ears, and the front flopped down and nearly covered his eyes.  She stood stock-still, held her breath, and wondered what on earth was happening.  Carving across his left cheekbone, over a severely-misshapen left ear, traversing his jawline, covering his neck and disappearing under the collar of his shirt, reappearing to circle his bicep, wind down his forearm, and curl across the back of his relaxed hand where it dangled over the arm of the chair, were an unsettlingly-livid patchwork of rippling red scars from extensive burns.  Nothing in his fearsome appearance, threadbare clothing, or informal attitude gave her any clues as to his identity or the reason for his presence.  He slouched and slept, long legs splayed across the floor, fringe falling over his eyes like a little boy’s.  He wore no jewellery but a wedding band and, unusually, on the pinky finger next to it, another smaller gold ring identical in style and colour. 

How had she wound up in hospital with a mysterious married man who’d clearly been unable to identify her, yet snoozed feet away as if he had every right to be here?  Indefinable panic gripped her.  He looked like a thug…and he was blocking her passage to the door.  She couldn’t move any further from the bed anyway.  Already, she could feel the cannula tugging uncomfortably, the tube pulling at full stretch from its hook to where she stood.  Behind the scarred man’s chair was a well-lit corridor, up and down which uniformed nurses occasionally flitted.  She tried to call out to them, but no sound escaped except a clicking of the saliva in her throat.  Terrified now, desperate for someone – even him – to explain what was happening, she cast about frantically, snatched up an empty plastic cup from the nightstand, and beat it repeatedly against the wood.

The scarred man started in mid-snore, jerking upright in his chair, eyes snapping open, mouth agape when he beheld her standing beside the bed in her hospital smock and bashing hell out of the nightstand for all she was worth.  His reaction was so extreme it struck her as comical, and burgeoning hysteria bubbled within her.  She stopped hitting the cupboard and stood shivering and gasping before him.

The scarred man spoke, his voice no more than a rasping whisper, like sandpaper scratching over rusting iron, “You’re awake!  Are you all right?  Should you be standing up?”

His gentle, hazel gaze held hers.  He didn’t attempt to menace her.  His attitude was one of cautious relief, as if he’d been awaiting this moment, unconvinced it would ever arrive.  She tried to ask what was happening, but couldn’t summon a single sound from her straining larynx.  Eventually, she raised a wavering finger and pointed it unsteadily towards his face.  He smiled shyly, and the frightening features were instantly transformed, “Hi.  Do you remember me?  Can you tell me what happened to you?”

Before she could attempt a reply, her wide eyes glazed, black spots bursting and spreading before her blurring vision, body swaying alarmingly past the point of balance.  The scarred man instantly sprang forward, scooped up her collapsing figure, and sat her carefully onto the bed, holding her swimming head against his shoulder, and whispering, “Ohhh-Kayyy…  Just keep still for a little while.  Don’t try to do too much.  You’ve had a rough few days, as far as we can figure out.  You’ve woken up a couple of times and been really confused.  Do you remember anything about it at all?”

A whine of anguish.  No.

“Okay.  Don’t get upset.  Just stay still.  You were all caught up in barbed wire.  Do you remember that?”

Holy shit – the tiny squares all over her arms!  She couldn’t recall a single thing…

“I found you.  You were near the beach in your wetsuit.  I cut you loose.  You had one heck of a head wound.  You were severely dehydrated, had lost a lot of blood, were in extreme shock, and covered in bruises – all over!  Your bottom and legs, your shoulder blades, the back of your head.  The doctors said it was as if you’d spent a long time stuck in one position.  Did you get trapped somewhere?  Did you capsize a boat, lose your surfboard, get swept out to sea or something?”

Again, all she could produce by way of reaction to these revelations was that ridiculous nasal whimper like an injured puppy.  Not being able to remember anything of what he’d described was distressing enough, but the inability to speak was immeasurably more disturbing.  Why couldn’t she make any noise come out of her mouth?  She groped around her throat and face seeking evidence of obvious injury, finding none.  Her lips felt revolting; rough, scabbed and peeling.  What must she look like?  The tears came fast and uncontrollably then, the sobs no less intense for being virtually mute.  The scarred man held and shushed her, stroking the tumbling tears off her cheeks with the pads of his big thumbs.  It crossed her mind that if he was supposed to be intimidating, he was terrible at it.  She clawed with frustration at the skin of her neck, “Shhh, okay…don’t hurt yourself any more than you are already.  Can’t talk, huh?”

She shook her head furiously.  The movement hurt so much her tears ceased abruptly, as she closed her eyes and waited for the jolt of self-inflicted agony to pass.

Again, the low, gravelly growl, “Perhaps because you spent a long time in saltwater…or the dehydration, maybe?  Hey, I’m no expert.  Want me to get the nurse?”

This time, she waved her hand rather than move her head.  What she wanted was for him to remain here, supporting her exhausted body in his comforting embrace, and reassuring her by his mellow presence.

“How about a warm drink?  A nice, milky coffee with lots of sugar?  Would you like that?”

A warm drink.  Yes, that would be nice.  Perhaps it would lubricate her paralysed vocal chords and allow her to manage a few words?  She made herself stop sniffling and upturn a grateful smile.  He might look like an escaped experiment from a mad scientist’s lair, but he was selfless and kind – that much was obvious.  She wondered how long he’d slept in the uncomfortable-looking chair, and what his wife thought about it?

“Are you ok to sit here while I go tell someone you’re awake?  Right by the Nurses Station, there’s a big ol’ machine that does ok coffee, for a hospital.  Believe me, the last couple of years, I’ve sampled enough hospital coffee to last a lifetime.”  He indicated the scarring, “I was in a wildfire back home.  That’s what screwed up my voice and made me so beautiful.”

She smiled again, sympathetically touched his burnt hand with the tips of her fingers, and pointed to the bathroom and the drip.

“Need to go?”

Yes.

“Ok.  I’ll unhook the drip, and you’ll have to carry it in there with you.  You sure you don’t want the nurse?”

Another negative wave of the hand.

“I can see you’re an independent woman.”  He winked, and she grinned.  It was impossible not to.  When you looked past the dreadful disfigurement, he was gentle, sweet, and charming. 

He reached over the bed with a long arm to unhook the bag and pass it to her to hold, “Shall I carry you, or you wanna walk?”

She pointed very firmly at the floor.  I’ll walk, or wet myself trying.

“Yes Ma’am.  Ok, perhaps I’ll support you for my own peace of mind, and we can go slowly.  Happy with that?”

Thumbs up.

“Great.  Arm around my waist, and I’ll put my arm around yours.  We’ll stand up on three, and just walk right on over to the bathroom like it’s nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing.  It was hard work controlling her rubbery legs, her heavy head swam, and without his support she wouldn’t have made it – but make it they did, all the way to a toilet surrounded by enough grab rails to equip a retirement home.  The scarred man took the drip bag from her and laid it carefully on the adjacent sill.  The window stood slightly open, the warm Keys breeze blowing steadily into the little room.  They looked at one another, suddenly shy.  He reversed smartly towards the door, muttering, “I guess you’ll be ok to do the next bit alone, right?  I’ve just gotta tell someone you’re awake, and then I’ll be right back.  Even last night, the doctor said you might be in and out of consciousness for days more.  They won’t believe it when I say you’re out of bed!  Guess I shoulda had twenty bucks on it with him, huh?”

She shrugged, and groped for the grab-handles either side of her.

“Back in a minute.”  He closed the door, and left her to pee in private.

****

Gage thundered down the corridor and thudded into the high counter encircling the Nurses Station.  A nurse whose nametag said ‘Patty’ looked up at him in surprise, “Are you all right, sir?”

“Jane Doe?  Room 5?  Awake!  I mean, wide awake, out of bed, and having a pee in the bathroom right now!”

Gage’s excitement was infectious.  Patty stared, momentarily thrown by the unexpected outburst, then beamed, snatched up the nearest phone, tapped in a number, and replaced the receiver, “Wow, that’s great news!  I’ve just paged the duty doctor.  As soon as he’s down, we’ll get him to come straight in and see her.  How does she seem?”

“Confused…bit shaken…and she can’t talk.  At all.”

“Really?”  Patty bustled to the folder tucked in the pigeonhole labelled ‘5’, flipped it open with a practised flick of her wrist, whipped her biro from her breast pocket with brisk efficiency, and scribbled notes as Gage talked.

“I was asleep in the chair, and then I heard this banging noise.  I woke up, and there she was standing beside the bed whacking the nightstand with a cup to attract my attention.”

“How long ago?”

“Five minutes…?”

“Ok…and generally?”

“Um…woozy…unsteady on her feet but very determined to walk to the bathroom.  Distressed she can’t talk.  I asked her if she wanted a coffee to drink and she was smiling, nodding.  She seems pretty alert considering she’s been out of it for days.  Oh, I had to unhook the drip so she could pee.  I just put it on the windowsill next to the toilet.”

“That’s fine.  How much had gone through, did you notice?”

“Half, maybe?”

“Ok,” scribbling another comment, noting the time, initialling her entry in the folder, “I just have to complete this task I’m doing – I won’t be long – and then I’ll come down and check her over before the doctor arrives.  Did she want help in the bathroom?”

“No.  She wanted to get on with it herself.  I did ask if she wanted the nurse and she indicated not.”

“Fine.”

“Why do you think she can’t talk?”

“That’s not a question for me; that’s one for the doctor…but it’s likely something to do with her head injury.  Does she have motor problems?”

“What…?”

“Are her limbs going all over the place like the Hippy Shake?”  Patty did a demonstration that owed less to medicine and more to hip-hop, making Gage snort with mirth, “Yeah…flailing legs, waving arms…”

“It can make you do all sorts of screwy stuff if the signals between brain and body are interrupted in some way.  She might have extensive swelling, bruising.  As I said, the doctor can assess it, and probably explain it better.”

“Bet he ain’t such a smooth mover, though.”

Patty sniggered, reached under the desk, and withdrew a battered copy of the local paper, “We’ve got some news for you, too.  I was going to get the doctor to tell you during his regular round today, but as she’s woken up already, it’s probably useful for you to know now.  Look at this.  It’s from Saturday.  Someone left it in the Family Room.  We nearly put it in the trash!  We’ve informed the police.”

Patty pushed the paper onto the counter in front of Gage.  Saturday’s headline read – LOCAL REPORTER STILL MISSING – and beneath it was a smiling picture of Jane…only he must stop calling her that, because her name was Kennedy McKendrick, and she’d been missing since last Tuesday night.  She’d worked ten years at the paper, was their lead reporter, and had been investigating a big story with a political angle.  The article heavily implied it was the reason for her disappearance.  Unnerved, recalling that helpless, broken, trapped little body, Gage blurted, “Are the cops on their way?”

Patty glanced at her watch, “I reported it when I got on shift a couple of hours ago and saw the paper.  They said they’d send somebody.  Given she was still comatose when I made the call, I guess they didn’t see much point in rushing straight over.”

“But…did you read this article?”  Gage whipped distractedly through its sensationalist content.

“I did, yeah.”

“And you don’t think she’s in any danger?  Doesn’t this imply what happened to her was deliberate, rather than an accident?”

“You can’t believe everything they put in the papers!  Surely all that’s for the cops to figure out?”

“Yeah…I guess…  I’d better get back.  Can I borrow this?”

“Take it.  It was going in the trash anyway.”

“Thanks.  Might jog her memory.”

“If you need some help, call us.  Press the button above the bed, or holler up the hall.  I’ll be right down.  The doctor won’t be much longer…and probably neither will the police.”

“Much obliged, Ma’am.”

Gage turned away, tucking the dog-eared paper under his arm, and hurrying further down the corridor to the coffee machine.  As he stood impatiently waiting for the partially blocked nozzle to trickle the correct measure of coffee into each cup, he was aware of darkly clad figures passing behind him.  He turned hopefully, in case it was the cops arriving, but it was only two guys in suits asking directions at the Nurses Station.  One of Patty’s colleagues was leaning out over the counter, pointing helpfully.  Gage thought no more about the men, anxious to get back in case Jane – Kennedy – needed more help in the bathroom than her pride would admit.  Preoccupied with not spilling the drinks, Gage was halfway back up the hall before he noticed the two men in front of him were also making a suspiciously brisk beeline for the open door of Room 5.  Watching surreptitiously, pretending to still be intent upon the coffee cups, Gage saw them pause in the doorway, peer inside, exchange a muttered word, and stride off again, heads inclined toward one another as they continued down the corridor, gabbling urgently.

Gage sped up as much as he could.  Anxiety knotted his belly.  The skim-read text of the alarming article circled his head.  The suspicious-looking men had stopped a few yards further down the corridor, backs to Gage.  Faces close together, muttering, gesturing; they were clearly disagreeing over their next move.  Gage suspected the girl was still in the bathroom, the room deserted, and their plan gone to hell as a result.  Patty the nurse had called the cops barely two hours ago.  Now, here were two guys who didn’t look at all like any law enforcement he’d ever encountered, acting suspiciously right outside the room of an investigative reporter with a ‘political exposé’ on her to-do list?  After nothing happening for days but tense and silent observation of the mysterious comatose woman in the deliberately darkened room, suddenly events were following one another with a distressing speed too incredible to be coincidental; either that, or he’d been watching way too much Netflix.

In his worn sneakers, Gage was able to creep down the last few feet of corridor without as much as a squeak of rubber sole on linoleum floor.  Eyes glued to the men, he waited until their backs were definitely turned, and slipped into the darkened room.  He put the coffees on the nightstand and shot across to the bathroom door, tapping urgently, “Hey, it’s me.  You ok?”

A nerve-jangling delay…and the door opened.  She stood with a toothbrush in her hand and foam around her lips, supporting herself on the basin.

“Sorry.  I got you a coffee…and you’re gonna want to take a look at this.”  He shoved the paper at her.  She took it, audibly gasping at her photograph on the front page.

“Stay in here for a minute.  There’s a couple of suspicious guys down the hall.  I caught them hanging around the doorway here.  I’m just gonna check the coast is clear.  In the meantime, read that article.  It’s pretty full-on!  It might all come flooding back.  Don’t come out ‘til I tell you, ok?”

Nodding.  Eyes flicking between his serious expression and the newspaper headline.

He pulled the door to and tiptoed to the bedside, snapping off the light and plunging the whole room into shadow.  He heard them coming back; brisk, clipped strides in their fancy shoes on the polished floor of the corridor.  The bigger guy stopped outside, leaning casually against the wall like he was waiting for a bus, eyeballing the Nurses Station with limited subtlety.  The shorter of the two, a wiry weasel of a man, glanced left and right and dived through the door of Room 5 straight into Gage, who stood motionless in the dimness between doorway and bed.

“Aah!”  The guy recoiled as if Gage was an exhibit in a house of horrors.  Wearing a decidedly-predatory smirk, Gage drawled conversationally, “Kinda dark in here, ain’t it?  I think you might have the wrong room, buddy.”

The weasel tried to dart sideways to get a look at the bed, but Gage anticipated the movement and sidestepped with him, blocking his view, “Like I said, I think you got the wrong room.”

The guy tensed, and Gage considered his options.  He couldn’t yell for help.  These days, all that came out of his mouth when he tried to shout was a powerful exhalation such as you’d employ to clean your glasses.  If the weasel went for him, he decided he’d throw both hot coffees in his face, swing as many punches as he could manage before the bigger sidekick joined the party, and hope to God someone noticed the commotion before they did to him what he was beginning to suspect they’d already done to poor Kennedy McKendrick.  He squared his stance, and waited for the little guy to make his move.  Resolute, his scars lending him a nightmarish aura in the shaft of light spilling from the corridor, Gage projected a more formidable image than he appreciated.  He was thin these days – omnipresent misery had killed most of his appetite – but he was muscular, powerful, accustomed to hard physical labour in challenging conditions, and he emitted inner strength from every pore.  The weasel evidently thought better of tangling with the threatening stranger, instead scuttling from the darkness of Room 5 into the well-lit corridor, bumping hard into his loitering colleague, who span sharply around, startled.

“My bad,” the little guy cocked his head towards the Nurses Station, “I thought the chick said Room 5, but I guess I heard her wrong.”

Gage swaggered forward with false bravado as the two men backed away, reaching the door and grasping the handle firmly in his trembling fist, “I guess you did.  Have a nice day.”

He swung the door very firmly shut in the weasel’s face, threw the bolt, and pelted over to the bathroom, “Kennedy?  You ok?  I don’t know who those guys were, but I didn’t like ‘em!  Did you sneak a look?  Seen them before anywhere?”

Silence.  No discernible movement on the other side of the door.  Perhaps she’d fallen over and couldn’t call for help?

“Kennedy, are you all right?  Are you decent?  I’m concerned about you, ok?  I’m coming in…”

Gage pushed the handle, stepped inside, and skidded on the drip bag, which was split and leaking its contents all over the bathroom floor.  The plastic tube had been violently detached, the bathroom window was wide open, and Kennedy McKendrick was gone!

 

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© Annie Holder 2019

Annie Holder has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published by Annie Holder in 2019.

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination.  Place and public names are sometimes used for the purposes of fiction.  Resemblance to any person, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.