Flashback (26 page)

Whatever the delusion, the little fool went on: "But he didn't," she insisted. "Dr. Mudd had nothing to do with Mr. Lincoln's death. Oh Joseph, if only you'd talk to him." Tilly turned sideways the better to clutch Joseph's arm and make her plea. He turned as well, and I could see the warm and doting look was gone; the glitter was that of rain turned suddenly to ice.

Tilly did not notice.

"Dr. Mudd was only following his Hippocratic oath to help people, like he's helping Joel. He is really the most wonderful man. If only you would-"

Joseph started working his jaw the way he does just before he chews someone up into tiny pieces. "Oh, Tilly, look! A flying fish!" I said. I know it was silly. I don't even know if they fly at night, but it was what came into my mind. She didn't even hear me.

"-get to know him. I know you would come to love him as I do."

At this I resorted to Mrs. Farrow's tactics and gave Tilly's shoulder a good hard pinch.

"Ouch. What is it, Raffie?"

"A flying fish," I repeated, my poor wine-sodden brain able to come up with nothing new. It succeeded in distracting her. She's been wanting to see one of these wondrous creatures since she arrived. We spent a few minutes gazing out at the calm surface of the sea where I had pretended to see the phenomenon.

Joseph's jaw stopped clenching, but I knew the disaster had not been averted but merely postponed. I had seen the flash in his eye when Tilly said she loved Samuel Mudd and knew my husband well enough to know this was not over.

15

Anna had seen cavers use the exhalation trick in tight places. They'd expel all the air to shrink their lung cavity in hopes of squeaking through. She'd believed them insane. Now she hoped there was at least a grain of method in their madness.

The last of her air dribbled out. Her lungs, mind, every cell in her body was screaming. With all the power she possessed, she shoved her right arm toward her face. Three inches were gained. It was enough. Fingers scrabbled on the smooth rubber, grabbed and the regulator was shoved back into her mouth. Air rushed in, and for that moment life was good. Closing her eyes, she sucked on the regulator like a kitten at its mother's teat, at peace to feel the stuff of life flowing in.

Joy was intense but short-lived. An odd memory of her husband playing Rosenkrantz-or was it Guildenstern?-in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. "Life in a box is better than no life at all," the character had said. Anna didn't agree.

Again she waggled the fingers of her left hand and her neon-flippered feet to let Mack know she was alive. This time she was not even tempted to laugh.

An ugly thought bloomed in her brain-given her situation, she'd believed it couldn't get uglier. She was wrong. The engine had not been precariously balanced. Had that been the case, wild sea horses could not have dragged her underneath it.

The instant before she'd become entombed in coral and cast iron she'd been shaken by a harsh grating sound, sharp, metal on rock; a pry bar, maybe, levering the engine from its seating, causing it to shift and fall on her. Who but Mack? Surely there were not marauding aquamen with crowbars stalking the ocean floors in hopes of finding idiot women in compromising positions.

She stopped kicking. Perhaps it was unwise to let Mack know she lived. Her lifeline, the air hose, was a fragile thing, easily pinched or cut.

A tapping on her thigh broke her from this miserable reverie, and she kicked. Maybe Mack was a murderer-if he was she was a dead woman-but he was the only game in town.

The tap turned to a pat probably meant to be reassuring. Pretending it worked, Anna lay still, letting the bubbles she breathed out rise through the maze of internal combustion parts to signify her continuing life. In some peculiar way it was a relief to realize she was completely and utterly helpless. There was nothing she could do: no trick, no act, no cleverness of mind. If she was to die, no fault could be laid at her door. It could not be said she had not been quick enough or strong enough or smart enough to save herself.

To her surprise, she relaxed. She enjoyed each breath wondering if it was to be her last, if Mack even now reached for his knife to cut the air hose. Death, so close, was seductive, welcoming. Perhaps Death was the true possessor of the phenomena attributed to vampires: if one looked into its eyes one became entranced, eager for union with darkness.

She was still breathing.

It seemed she lay in this otherworldy peace for an infinity. When she was jerked back to awareness by the clamor of metal stakes pounding on her iron coffin lid, she woke with something very like anger. It faded, quickly to be replaced by a more corrosive and dangerous emotion: hope.

Someone-presumably Mack-was banging about. Working, maybe, with his pry bar to finish the job, lever the engine off whatever small ledge had saved her life, so she would be crushed.

That made no sense. Thumb and finger on the air hose for a few minutes would do the trick, take less energy and leave no clues. Mack was trying to save her.

That made no sense either. Why try kill to her, then try to save her? So he could look the hero?

Don't worry about it, she told herself. The rescue attempt will probably kill you just as dead. Lifting a massive weight wasn't easy, even underwater. Should the load shift or slip, she would be pate for the fishes. The hypnotic pull of death had been broken, and now Anna was afraid. Her body pressed and cramping, the engine cutting where it mashed against the back of her hand, immobility, the small half-lighted space before her eyes, all this crawled into mind and bone till she wanted to fight, to scream and flail. She could do none of these and watched inwardly as panic turned to acid and tried to melt her resolve not to fight.

Clanking near her head grew louder. Sound coming through iron and skull to join with the shriek of soul and cells. Above her face motes in the water moved. The cast-iron ceiling of her world began to shift, lift ever so slightly. Before she could move or breathe, strong hands clamped around her ankles. Grind changed to a shriek. Her claustrophobic world kaleidoscoped. Anna had an instant to wonder if she was dying or going mad. Black sky moved. Her back and sides scraped over the coral canyon forming her shroud. The regulator was ripped from her mouth. Vision swam in bubbles and particles of once-living plants and animals. Caught in this vortex, she didn't fight to keep the scrap of rubber that fed life to her one lungful at a time but let the world change, watching it with a timeless fascination.

Then light. She was out. The engine rolled, teetered, then crashed back down on the place from which she'd been so abruptly delivered. A hand was on her arm, Mack's face close, his thumb jerking upward.

Newborn and free, Anna came back into herself and kicked for the surface to erupt into sun and air. Ripping off mask and snorkel, she let them sink away from her. Though it was foolish, she could no longer bear to have anything covering her face. She kicked off her fins, and they, too, fell away. Then her weight belt, unbuckled, sank like a stone.

Hands were grasping, pushing, pulling her up. Scrabbling, she tumbled over the gunwale and onto the boat's deck. No longer could she bear anything against her skin; she clawed at her zipper and fought to free herself of her dive skin. The nylon suit caught and tangled over the booties and she kicked and cried out. Daniel and Mack moved to strip the suit and booties off. Twice she kicked the men helping her, but she couldn't stop herself.

At last she wore nothing but her swimsuit and still it was too much. Ripping it off, she pushed away the hands that would have steadied her, lashed out at the legs standing between her and the sun. Like a panic-stricken cat, she hissed and clawed till she was alone on one side of boat, Mack and Daniel cowering on the other.

Space around her, she stopped the struggle. She breathed. She began to shake so badly she had to sink to the deck to keep from tumbling overboard. Snot ran from her nose. Naked and gasping and crying and swearing, she sat in a wet heap until the fit passed.

As she quieted, so did the world. Only the lap of waves against the hull gentled the silence. She let her head drop back against the side of the boat.

"Whoo, boy," she said to no one in particular. "Not my idea of a good time."

The men said nothing. Anna focused her eyes on them and smiled at their horror-stricken faces.

Her brain had broken. Never would she admit that. Too scary. Too alien. Panic would come back. "Sorry," she said. "I guess I needed some space."

Another silence was lapped away by the sea. Mack was the first to break it.

"Are you hurt?" He asked like he genuinely cared, like her hurt was his hurt. "I saw your hand wiggling and your feet kicking and I was afraid you were hurting. Are you hurting? Did it hurt you?"

His very real, white-lipped anguish at the thought she'd suffered pain took away any residual suspicion she harbored that he was the cause of her recent incarceration.

"I'm not hurt," she said.

"Good. Good. That's good."

Mack's relief was evident. And exaggerated, unless he had loved her pure and chaste from afar all these weeks. She doubted that, but was grateful for the concern.

"You okay?" Daniel asked warily.

"I guess." Anna leaned her head back but didn't close her eyes. The harsh glare of the sun, the impossible blue of the sky, the infinite miles and years of space above and around her were heaven.

"You maybe want to put something on?" Daniel asked.

"Sure." Anna didn't move.

He took off his shirt and tossed it to her. Anna did not slip her arms into the sleeves or button it but used it like a blanket to cover her nakedness. She was not being coy. Any form of confinement, however benign, was too much to contemplate. The freaky sense of doom licked at her brain again. What the fuck is wrong with me? she screamed, but only in her mind.

"What happened?" she asked.

"The engine shifted," Mack said.

"Why?"

"I don't know." He looked at her when he said it, voice and face way too earnest, eye contact too firm. He knew. Or he knew something. Could there have been a third party with them, one she'd not seen? Had Mack done something careless or stupid that he did not wish to take responsibility for?

Anna decided to let it pass. There would be time enough later to worry at the details.

"Then what?"

"You were wiggling. I thought you were hurting. I came up and told Daniel."

Mack wasn't one for edifying detail or embroidering a story.

"We didn't know what you were suffering," Daniel took over. "Didn't know if we had time to get equipment for a safer lift. Mack hooked the anchor to the engine and I pulled with the boat."

"When it lifted a little I yanked you out," Mack finished.

Stripped of emotion and "what ifs," it sounded absurdly simple.

"I'm glad you did," Anna said. "Thanks."

Mack just looked away, embarrassed, maybe. "Don't mention it," Daniel said politely.

Twice now Anna'd been rescued on this same wreck. She hated being the victim, hated being beholden and was fast coming to hate water sports.

"I'll get your stuff," Mack said. "Fins, mask-you dropped them."

Before Anna could protest, he was over the side. It was in her mind that she would never again venture into water deeper than that in a bathtub, but she knew she would, and soon. A horror left untreated had a nasty habit of becoming a phobia.

He was gone for what seemed like a very long time, but Anna didn't mind. Above water, breathing, she worked to settle her mind. Put on clothes. Stop acting crazy-crazy like Lanny. Daniel respected her silence and busied himself organizing equipment till Mack returned with her BC, tank, mask, fins and weight belt. Having dumped the stuff on deck, he sat on the gunwale staring at her.

"You're scarred," he blurted out apropos of nothing. The compassion in his face and voice robbed the declaration of rudeness.

Anna did not need a moment to figure out what he meant. For nearly ten years she'd borne the jagged, shiny, pink line across her chest from above her left nipple to her right armpit, but she'd never grown so accustomed to the disfigurement that she forgot she had it. It was the deciding factor in the purchase of all bathing suits and some tops: was the neckline high enough to cover the scar? It took an effort, but she did not reach up, trace the mark with her fingers, nor did she give in to the need to tug Daniel's uniform shirt up to cover it.

"I'm scarred," she agreed.

"How did you get it?"

Anna searched Mack's face, looking for the avid curiosity, the touch of the vicarious ghoul that usually accompanied the question. What she found was an old pain and what looked to be a genuine concern, perhaps even fondness, for her. Maybe saving someone's life did that. The Chinese said once you saved a life you became responsible for it. Or perhaps the vicious scar on her chest made her a member of the club, a victim brutally marked as Mack had been marked by the whip.

Resentment and revulsion boiled up in Anna, and she looked away for fear he would see it in her eyes. The feelings were base, unworthy, unfair, but she couldn't help feeling angry that she, too, might be considered a victim, a helpless child once tortured. For a fleeting moment she tasted the shame Mack had carried all of his life. It shook her enough she could banish the most uncharitable of her illogical thoughts.