Silent Protector (12 page)

“No, we need to get the clinic in order. Monica isn’t going anywhere. We’ll find her later.” She found the list of supplies that the nurse kept on hand and compared it to what was scattered about. It appeared that there were a number of basic items missing. Gauze, bandages, antibiotics, painkillers, and some bottles of stuff she couldn’t pronounce.

She could hear Ian talking on his phone out in the hall—first to the police, then the resort and finally an insurance company.

They finished securing the rec center, just as the security guard arrived. The police were on their way from Northglade, but it would be a while. There was nothing they could do except wait—something Ian wasn’t that good at doing, she could see from his pacing.

After a few minutes of briefing the security guard, he said to her, “We have time to follow that trail again. Feel up to it?”

“Of course,” she answered, surveying the door. “I want answers, too.”

“After what happened to you there, with Monica, it’s okay if you don’t want to go back. In fact, if you want to charge Monica—”

“No. At least not yet. It was a scuffle, that’s all. We were both upset, and I’d rather focus on Charlie. I won’t fail him again. But we do need to talk to her. I want answers, and I think we’ll get them faster if we promise we won’t charge her.”

“Charlie should be giving a statement, Liz. It’s more important now, and it won’t hurt him.” He watched her expression cloud, then added, “You realize that by not allowing Charlie to be questioned and by telling him he shouldn’t talk to strangers that you’ve done exactly what your brother-in-law wanted and what William Smith and the cartel would like.”

She glared at him. “No, it’s not like that!”

“Jerry told Charlie not to talk to strangers, too, and you reinforced that. We know his reasons were criminal, but Charlie doesn’t know that. By reinforcing what Jerry said, you’re making it progressively harder for Charlie to talk. And it will be easier for the defense to successfully throw out his testimony.”

He was right. And worse, by preventing Charlie from talking, he could easily
never
tell what happened, stating that it was too traumatic. If Smith was allowed to go free, many people could be hurt with the drugs he continued to sell.

But Smith would never allow Charlie to live, Ian had said. Was it too late?

Dejected and worried, Liz followed Ian to the back door. They left the guard promising to call them as soon as the police arrived, and Ian then detoured through the kitchen, grabbing a couple of juice boxes and granola bars for them.

As they ate them, they trekked back to where they were when Elsie called. There, Ian spotted the large mass he’d seen through his night vision goggles. “Look.”

It was a car. Liz felt her heart leap into her throat. She pulled in a sharp breath as she grabbed Ian. “That’s it! That’s the car that ran me off the road.”

L
iz felt her mouth go suddenly dry. When they were back at the center, she’d taken the time to have a tall drink of water, but now, it felt as though she hadn’t drank a drop of it.

Gingerly, she took a step closer, still clinging to Ian. She reached out her free hand and whispered, “I’m sure this is the car that ran me off the road.”

As her hand closed in on the hood of the small SUV, Ian stretched out his to pull it back. “Let’s not leave any fingerprints, okay?”

She drew back, nodding. Then, with Ian beside her, she walked slowly around it. Someone had rammed it nose first into the heavy brush. She could see the tracks it had made. The road, the one from the causeway to the village, could be seen ahead between the trees. Crushed ferns and other plants showed the tracks.

They stopped at the passenger door. “Wow, this was it, all right,” Ian murmured.

Liz nodded. The whole side was scraped and dented. The passenger mirror dangled crookedly, with a spiderweb of cracks in its reflective surface. The blue paint of the vehicle had been scraped down to the shiny bare metal, and
in spots, Liz could easily see the remnants of her rental’s paint. Red scratches and flecks stained both mirror casing and side door.

Slowly, Ian walked around the whole vehicle, stopping at the driver’s side door. He took out his phone and dialed. Thirty seconds later, he was reeling off the vehicle identification number, followed by the license plate number.

Liz tried to peer inside, but the windows were dark. Getting as close as she dared without touching it, she could finally see through the tinted windows. The interior resembled the car she’d driven into the water. Clean, impersonal, nothing out of the ordinary. “I bet this thing is a rental, too.”

After covering his hand with his shirt, Ian tried the driver’s door, but it was locked. He walked, trying the other doors, but they, too, were secure.

“So, whoever drove this vehicle in here may still be around.” Liz stated the obvious. “We have four crimes, Ian. Running me off the road, setting fire to the Callahan house, breaking into the clinic, and me being attacked.”

“Five, if you include the poisonous snake dumped into your bag.”

“Other than the attacks on me, they all seem so random, so totally separate. But let’s face it. They have to be related.”

“It would seem like a pretty big coincidence if they weren’t,” he answered.

“Well, the guy who drove this isn’t here. Let’s see if we can’t find out where he went.”

Ian looked up at her. “More skills from your wildlife refuge?”

“We don’t usually chase injured animals in the woods because we often allow nature to take its course. But occasionally we are told about injured, endangered animals that
need to be found and cared for. A few years back, we were looking for an injured lynx. We found the animal, but it was hard to track him. I became really good at looking for tracks. And respecting injured predators.”

With that, she began to search the ground. She pointed to one spot. “See, this is where several people stood, besides us, that is. You can see two different sized prints in the crushed ferns. Both hard boots, I’d say. It’s funny that closer to the rec center there is more sand.”

“The village has been around for decades. George says his father helped build the original houses here. They were all fishermen back then. It was their wives who grew vegetables and fruit and who cut down the trees around the village for firewood. So it’s been cleaned out and built up over the years.”

Nodding, Liz kept her attention to the ground. “They went this way. They—” She stopped.

“What is it?”

Liz stooped as Ian came close. She pointed out to him what she’d seen when he bent down on one knee and shoved his hat up farther. “Do you think that might be blood?”

Ian studied the large brown smear on the cabbage palm leaf. He pointed to the splatters on the vines at the edge of the impromptu trail. Most of the blood had already been ground into ferns and air plants, but it wasn’t hard to follow the blood, thanks to the bright green of the leaves.

“We have to follow this.” Liz stated the obvious, but the danger they could be facing didn’t escape her. Someone had lost a lot of blood. The web belt dragged in by the dog suggested that. And the amount on the belt had to be enough of a loss to kill a person.

This had something to do with Charlie, she just knew it. So maybe finding whoever was hurt wasn’t the wisest idea even if he had a gun. William Smith wanted Charlie dead.

She couldn’t leave a person to die out here, though, could she?

She swallowed.
Lord, take care of us. Help us do the right thing.

No, she wouldn’t ignore the fact that someone was hurt, even if it was Jerry’s killer. They needed to find him, even half dead, so Charlie could recognize him and have the police arrest him. They needed to end this nightmare.

She stood, aching and drooping in the heat, feeling sweat trickle down her temples. Humidity made her legs feel thick and heavy. Maybe she should have asked Charlie to try really hard to tell them what he saw.

Lord, give me wisdom.

The sun that had shone brightly had now slipped behind a long, gray cloud. Through the canopy of blowing trees, she could see the day was deteriorating. “It’s getting cloudy out.”

“And I think the wind has risen,” Ian finished for her.

“When was the last time you checked the forecast?”

“Not since this morning. The FEMA people have my cell phone, and so do the police. They would have called by now if we were being told to evacuate.”

She wanted to ask for the details of an evacuation. Where would the people go? How long would they be away? What kind of security would there be? Would they take Monica, even after she’d attacked her? But right now, the trail kept her attention. She pointed to two distinct marks along its edge. And up a way, she found where blood had beaded on the dry sand. She followed it, hoping that she was doing the right thing.

“Look.”

She followed Ian’s hand as he bent down and pointed to the ground. A single line dug into the thin soil. As she followed it along one section where rocks and sand met, the line looked like divots spelling out some kind of Morse code signal. Short dots, a few long dashes, then a dot or two again.

Liz opened her mouth to ask Ian if he noticed that but stopped. Worry creased his brow as he stared up at the darkening clouds. She bet he was kicking himself for not checking the forecast more recently. If the tropical storm was heading this way and determined to become a hurricane, he needed to coordinate a possible evacuation.

These were his parishioners. They were his responsibility. He cared for them. Even if the storm missed them, everyone needed to be prepared. Up in Maine, they needed to be prepared for storms, though theirs were mostly in the dead of winter. Where she lived on the coast, the cold was tempered by the Gulf of Maine—cool summers and damp, cold winters.

She touched his arm. “It’s okay. We’ll find out where this trail leads, then we’ll go back to your office and you can check on the storm. No news is good news, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s just that this is my job, Liz. I’m supposed to take care of these people
and
take care of Charlie, and it looks like it’s all falling apart.”

“Sometimes that happens. My father died of a heart attack, and the next week, my sister died. I thought everything was falling apart. The week after, Jerry took off with Charlie, and I thought this is it. There’s nothing bad left to happen.”

“But Jerry came back.”

“Yes. He needed money and knew I’d give him some in return for seeing Charlie regularly. I’d been saving my
money for a good lawyer to try to get custody of Charlie. Instead, I gave most of it to Jerry. He promised to let me see Charlie, and I’d be risking a lot trying for custody. So I took his offer. I guess I’m not much of a gambler.”

She sighed as they continued along the trail. “But you know what? I don’t regret it. I’d been given an opportunity to bond with Charlie and have him know and trust me. If I’d saved the money, Jerry may have left the state and I may never have seen Charlie again.” She smiled at Ian. “What I’m saying is that sometimes it doesn’t look right or feel right, but it works out all right. I like to think that it’s because I trust God. And I know He’ll take care of me because I want His will to be first and foremost in my life.”

He had been listening to her. She’d noticed his tiny reactions to her words. The slight tightening of the jaw, the way he blinked.

And he watched her still, even after she’d fallen silent. She felt her mouth twist up into a slight smile. When she was rewarded with a smile in return, her own fell away. Ian had a beautiful smile, so confident and full of depth and rich with a gentleness that reached into his eyes, across to hers and deep down into her soul.

Her breath left her. She was crazy to be allowing a smile to have this effect on her. Ian was devoted to this island, to his work, to his life here, to his marshal assignment.

And she needed to get Charlie away from here, to let him heal, to allow him to tell her what he’d seen in his own time, all the while keeping him out of harm’s way, away from all the evil that may have followed her here.

There was no way they could reconcile the two needs, even if they wanted to. Ian lived to excel at his job and nothing else. She refused to be like her sister and believe she could change him.

Still, his smile mesmerized her. She found herself taking a short step closer to him and touching his face with her fingertips. His jawline was rough with a light-colored beard that he must not have shaved off this morning. He usually wore a hat, tipped forward to shield his eyes, but right now, it was shoved back, offering her a full view of his light blue eyes. She fingered his sideburn, lightly, stroking downward with the direction of growth.

His eyes closed, his mouth moved briefly. Was he praying? She had yet to hear him pray but surely as the village pastor, he’d pray often, wouldn’t he?

If only they could find some common ground with Charlie. He wanted only one thing. To him, identifying Smith was too important to allow any other solution. But she could never allow it to happen. Charlie’s emotional health balanced on a thin beam right now. Seeing him today pull away from people just because he’d hurt himself was proof that he could easily pull away permanently.

A screech sliced the air, and Ian’s eyes flew open. Joseph, a wild brushstroke of rainbow colors, swooped by.

She and Ian ducked. The bird was acting almost aggressively. No wonder Elsie didn’t like the crazy creature.

With that, she stepped away from Ian and all the temptation she’d felt with his smile. As nice as it would have been to feel his arms around her again, she couldn’t allow it to cloud why she was here.

“Let’s follow that trail again, shall we? I think the beach is ahead,” she suggested quietly.

Indeed, the marks they’d been following led to the beach. They stepped from the dense growth onto a narrow swath of white sand. Automatically, they both looked up at the
sky. Bands of gray clouds lingered far off to the west, while vertical columns of rain, made into a strong slant by the hard wind, connected the clouds to the heavy seas.

The ever-present wind had picked up, too, drawing choppy waters in to slap the shore.

“That way to the village, right?” she asked, pointing southward to her left.

“Yes. There’s a dock at the end of the path between my house and the Wilsons’. No beach to speak of. Lots of mangroves growing right out of the water. But just over that small knoll is the stream. It’s the runoff from the spring that services Moss Point.”

The knoll wasn’t far, but Liz looked down at the sand. The trail they’d been following led into the water, but the surf had washed much of it away. There was no blood on the beach, either. So what had been dragged here?

Not knowing what to do, she began to walk south and within a few steps spied the knoll. Liz turned left to peer upstream and into the forest. Fresh water had dug out a deep gorge on its trip to the beach and now lush ferns grew along the bank, securing the sandy soil from erosion.

She turned to face the water, and climbed up the small knoll to peer out at the waves.

“What’s that over there?” she asked, pointing toward a shallow sandbank that was rapidly disappearing with the incoming tide. Ian looked down where the salt water lapped at the mouth of the creek. Water had accumulated in an open bowl that the tides had reformed into a small tidal pool.

The surf, increased from the impending storm, had shoved something against the inward side of the tidal pool. Ian waded into the warm water. “It’s a hat, that’s all. Kind of like mine.”

“No, not that, Ian!” Liz’s voice rose as she took several steps closer to him. “Over the knoll in the water.”

Ian climbed up on the knoll and searched the shallow water. One hard wave caught the thing and shoved it on the shore. Liz saw Ian jump back.

Liz climbed up beside him for a better look. Then gasped.

Slapping against the surf side of the sand bowl was the body of a man.