Body Search

by Jessica Andersen

  Ripe male curses and the snick of metal on brush sounded up ahead, though Tansy couldn’t see the men through the nasty fog rising from the forest floor. The brief ray of sunlight winked out, and the world was plunged back into the gray of the oncoming storm. She shivered slightly and forged on.

  Scanning the ground for the best place to step foot, she noticed a small stone to one side. It might have been purple, though it was hard to tell in the stormy half light.

  “Hey, I think I’ve got another one of the rocks!” She bent down beneath an overhanging limb and stepped off the path, reaching for the unassuming-looking lump.

  Without warning, the ground gave way beneath her leading foot. “Aah!” She jerked back, trying to keep her balance, and banged her head against the low-slung branch.

  Hazel yelled, “Trask! Dale! Help!”

  And Tansy fell.

  DALE TURNED BACK AT HAZEL’S cry. His gut clenched when he realized they couldn’t see the women through the mist. He ran towards them, terror slamming in his ears. He saw only a single figure in the mist where two had been.

  And his heart stopped.

  “Tansy!” He charged to the place where she’d disappeared, and skidded to a halt at the edge of a crumbling void that had been disguised by a light mat of twigs, dirt and leaves. “It’s a damn pit trap!”

  There was so little light filtering through the low canopy that he couldn’t see the bottom. Couldn’t see Tansy. His heart started to beat again, but in an erratic gallop that seemed to say Too late, too late, too late.

  “Tansy!” he called, “Tansy, honey, can you hear me?”

  Trask shouldered Hazel aside, away from the jagged edge of the pit, and the three leaned down, peered through the darkness and saw…nothing.

  Dale was taking a breath to yell again when he heard a rustle from the pit. Then Tansy’s voice.

  “Dale. I’m fine. Keep away from the edge. I don’t think it’s too stable.” She was breathing hard, but her voice was strong, and he felt such a surge of relief and twisting guilt that he closed his eyes momentarily against the power of it. Against the power she held over him.

  “Thank you, God,” Hazel breathed, and the sentiment expressed everything that was in Dale’s heart but would never be said.

  “Can you shine one of the lights down here?” Tansy called up. “I’m wedged against something.”

  The lights. Of course. Dale reached into the pocket of his slicker for one of the flashlights they’d picked up at the dock. He aimed it into the hole and snapped it on.

  His mouth dried to dust.

  The pit was perhaps ten feet deep, and rough-sided. Tansy lay at the bottom, flat up against one wall. She was wedged, all right.

  By a thick, sharpened stick.

  “Huh.” Trask blew out a breath and rocked back on his heels.

  Dale felt a flash of irritation at his uncle’s characteristic emotionlessness. If there was ever a time in his life that he wanted to panic, it was now. But he couldn’t. Tansy needed him.

  “Dale?” Her muffled voice carried upwards, sounding so much farther away than she really was. “Is it like the ones we saw in Africa?” With her face pressed against the dirt, she couldn’t see that the pit was lined with thirty or so three-foot-long spikes. But she’d reached a hand back to touch the one that held her in place. The knowledge was in her voice, as was the fear.

  “Yeah, it’s like Africa,” Dale said, unable to think of a reason to lie. They’d saved a village elder, and much of the village, from a rare pulmonary disease. The healthy men had hunted in celebration of the elder’s recovery, and Dale and Tansy had been given the dubious honor of watching their dinner skewered to death in a pit not unlike this one.

  Dale tried to banish the memory of the blood, and armor himself against the knowledge that he’d almost lost Tansy just now. “Hang on,” he said inanely, aware that his voice cracked on the second word. “I’m coming down there.”

  He shushed the chorus of protests with a quick gesture. “You’re not strong enough to boost her up if she’s hurt,” he said to Hazel. He turned to Trask. “And I’m trusting you to haul me out.”

  Something shifted in the older man’s eyes, an emotion hidden beneath so many layers it almost couldn’t find its way out. Dale held his hand out for a shake, and somehow the shake became an embrace.

  For a brief moment, Dale was seventeen again. No longer a boy, not quite a man, he’d stood beside the empty graves and wished for a hug. Now, standing beside the pit that could have been Tansy’s grave, he realized something.

  Fifteen years later wasn’t too late, after all.

  “Of course, boy.” Trask turned away and cleared his throat as he pulled one of the thick, fishy ropes from the bags they’d hauled with them.

  Dale handed the shotgun to Hazel. “Here, keep an eye on this for me, will you?”

  An islander to the core, she said nothing, merely accepting the weapon with a nod.

  With Trask counterweighting the rope, Dale slid down the crumbling side of the pit, flashlight clamped between his teeth. The moist dirt was cool and faintly slimy to the touch, and a shower of small rocks cascaded down on his head every time Trask’s feet shifted.

  “Dale? Watch out for the spikes.”

  He grinned around the flashlight at Tansy’s unnecessary caution, but understood her need to say something. Anything.

  His feet touched bottom more quickly than he might have imagined, and he let go of the rope that had slowed his descent. Above, Trask cursed in relief. The lobsterman was tough as nails, but deadweight was deadweight.

  “I’m here, Tans.” Dale didn’t waste time with a survey of their surroundings. Instead, he knelt, and ran quick, testing fingers over her.

  “I said I’m fine,” she snapped as though she didn’t want him touching her, but he passed it off as stress and maybe a bit of shock.

  “I just want to make sure there aren’t any hidden injuries, Tans.” He spoke soothingly, as he might to a patient, and was startled when she slapped at him with her free hand.

  “Just get me out of here, okay? I think I’m lying on…something.” Her voice tailed up at the end of the sentence. When she began to struggle in earnest, Dale abandoned proper procedure and helped lever her up and aside, freeing her left arm where it had been pinned beneath her, and sliding her away from the unyielding spike.

  “You’re okay. I’ve got you.” He wasn’t sure which one of them needed it more, but he dragged her into his arms and held on tight, heedless of the flashlight dropping to the floor of the pit. “I’ve got you.”

  She burrowed in tight and hung on. He wondered if she could feel his heart beating fast and furious. Part of him hoped she couldn’t.

  “You two okay down there?” A flashlight beam from above caught them for a few seconds, then discreetly slid away. Trask muttered, “Oh, sorry.”

  But it was enough to interrupt the moment. Dale released Tansy, waiting a moment to make sure she was solid on her feet, then called up to Trask, “Stand by on the rope. Let’s get her out of here.”

  With a heave and an indelicate boost, Dale helped Tansy scramble up the side of the pit. Chunks of wormy dirt broke free as she gained the outside.

  Suddenly alone in the damp darkness, he bent down and scooped up the flashlight, which had fallen near where she had been trapped. The beam glinted off something other than dirt. Dale froze.

  I think I’m lying on…something. And she had been, though not the bones that he had briefly feared.

  No, it wasn’t a skeleton. But it was evidence that they weren’t the first to visit the bottom of the pit. Splinters of rotted wood suggested that spikes had been shattered and replaced. And a cheap plastic watch lay broken, abandoned beside a corroded piece of jewelry.

  “You ready?” Trask called down from above.

  Dale flashed his light quickly around the pit, which was maybe ten feet square. Spikes and dirt. No other signs of violence, which in a way made the evidence all the
spookier. He bent and picked up the watch and what turned out to be a friendship locket, of the sort island high school boys might give to their sweethearts when the couple agreed to go steady.

  “Ready.” Past ready, Dale thought, as the rope snaked back down to the bottom of the pit. “Get me the hell out of here.”

  Though it was dark and drizzly, and the wind had sprung back up after their brief respite, he felt a blast of warmth as he emerged from the pit trap back onto the ground level of Lobster Island. Maybe it was being out of that black, deathly pit, he thought.

  Or maybe it was the sight of Tansy, Trask and Hazel waiting for him.

  Chapter Eleven

  They gathered near the pit trap with their backs to the jagged hole, not ready to move on, but not wanting to stare into the obscene thing.

  “Was it Roberts, do you think?” Hazel asked. Her eyes were stark and worried. She held the shotgun at the ready as though fearing the woods were alive with enemies.

  As well they might be, Tansy thought.

  Dale shook his head. “No, I think that’s been there a long time, longer than Roberts has been on the island. And I’m worried that it’s not the only one. Someone doesn’t want us on this path, that much is clear.” He glanced down at the cheap necklace and the broken watch he’d found at the bottom of the hole, and took a deep breath before his eyes found Tansy’s. “I want you and Hazel to go back down to the jeep and wait for us. You’ll be dry there, and she has the gun, so you’ll be safe, too.”

  Though part of her wanted to run screaming, Tansy glared at Dale and wished the ground would open up and swallow him whole. Then she hugged herself and shuddered, realizing she’d never wish that on anyone ever again, having experienced it firsthand. Those first few moments, when she’d been trapped in the cold, oily blackness had been bad. Realizing she could easily have been killed was worse. But understanding that someone had laid the trap beside the old pathway and baited it with a chunk of the purple rock?

  That was downright gruesome.

  Still, she clenched her jaw and shook her head. “I’m not going back without you. We’re a team.”

  A team. That was all, because Hazel was right. It wasn’t about what Dale would or wouldn’t take from her anymore. It was about what he could give her.

  What she deserved.

  Dale bared his teeth in a feral expression so far removed from Dr. Dale Metcalf, M.D., that she backed up a step. “Damn it! Why can’t you be sensible and go wait in the car? This doesn’t have anything to do with you, don’t you get that?”

  Tansy flinched but stood firm. She thought she caught a ghost of desperation in his expression, but it might have been wishful thinking. She would give him this before they said goodbye. She’d see him through this quest for his parents, this search for his past, then she’d go, knowing she had done her very best.

  But also knowing that she’d accepted defeat before she lost her self-respect.

  “I’m. Not. Leaving.” She glared up at him. “Got it?”

  He didn’t answer. He stared down at her, breathing heavily, his eyes darkening almost to midnight.

  In that instant, she thought he might kiss her and every traitorous, womanly fiber in her body yearned for the contact, yearned for the warmth amidst the cold and the calm amidst the storm. They swayed ever so slightly toward each other, compelled by a force greater than the wind.

  “Just kiss her and let’s move on,” Trask demanded from behind them, “We’ve got maybe two hours before the storm hits for real.” He punctuated the complaint with an oof that Tansy figured came from an elbow planted in his ribs.

  But the interruption was for the best, she knew. She stepped away from Dale and shook her head. “Neither Hazel nor I are going back to the car. We’re all going to hike up to the headwater and stop Roberts. If we’re lucky, we’ll find the source of the stones—” she touched her pocket “—and maybe…”

  The graves. They all thought it, but not one of them could say the words. The wind chose that moment to howl through the trees like the tortured damned and Tansy flinched.

  “Fine.” Dale cursed. “Have it your way.” He finally backed off and nodded, though his eyes stayed that deep, intimidating color they took on when he was really upset.

  Or really turned on. The memory brought frantic blood chasing through Tansy’s body, remembering how it had been between them. And though it was un wise and probably destructive, she let the memory come and drive away the feeling of damp, rotting earth and the smell of old blood and new fear.

  At least it made her feel warmer, for a little while.

  WHEN THEY REACHED the headwater, it was almost anticlimactic. There was no sign of Roberts, nor any evidence that he’d been there. There was nobody to claim the broken watch and the locket. Though Trask had been unable to identify the items, his mention of missing boat crews had started Dale wondering.

  What if fishing off Lobster Island wasn’t as dangerous as the numbers suggested?

  What if it was living on Lobster Island that killed people?

  “Now what?” Standing at his shoulder, Tansy asked the question for all of them. The woods thinned at the edge of the river, allowing the gray daylight to filter through, along with more of the rain and the wind.

  Harriet, it seemed, was in a hurry to reach Lobster Island, after all.

  “I don’t know.” Damn it. He’d been so sure this was the key. They would reach the headwater, find Roberts and he would lead them to…what? Dale wasn’t even sure anymore whether he was looking for the source of the pseudo-PSP or the bodies of his parents.

  Part of him feared he would find both.

  “Are we sure this is the right place?” Hazel asked, joining them at the water’s edge.

  Trask nodded. “Yeah. But I don’t see any of the stones.”

  The older man had been growing increasingly more agitated as the trek wore on. Dale understood, as he was feeling it, too. There was a growing sense of danger coming from all directions, along with the confusion that came from not knowing enough.

  Tansy often fretted because she wanted to know more, always more. Before, he’d found it irritating, an invasion.

  Now, he understood how she felt.

  “I see one!” Hazel’s excited shout yanked their attention upstream, to where she hung off an over-reaching limb, straining toward the water. “I’ve found one of the rocks!”

  Trask cursed and started toward her at a run. “Damn it, Hazel, be quiet and get back! You’re going to—”

  Fall in.

  The branch broke and Hazel overbalanced with a cry. She splashed ungracefully into the waist-deep water, surfaced once, and disappeared.

  “The slicker!” Dale yelled to the running Trask. “Her slicker’s filled with water.” Damn it, he knew he should’ve left the things behind. But turning them inside out and rubbing them with dirt had camouflaged the bright colors enough that he’d thought it safe to keep them on in the cold, cutting wind.

  Now, it seemed that he’d been wrong.

  “No kidding,” snapped the veteran lobsterman. He tore off his own jacket and plunged into the river after Hazel.

  He stumbled and went under almost immediately. Dale was halfway out of his own jacket when he saw his uncle surge back up, clutching Hazel around her torso.

  Both of them were coughing and spluttering, but unhurt when they dragged themselves ashore.

  “God, are you okay?” Dale knew his question was inane, but didn’t know how to articulate the things he was feeling.

  Feelings were Tansy’s department.

  “Well, I won’t worry about getting wet from the rain anymore.” Huddled against Trask’s solid bulk, Hazel attempted a smile through lips that were already beginning to tremble from the cold. “I feel stupid as hell, though. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Hush,” Trask ordered. “You’re about the least stupid person I’ve ever met.”

  As a declaration of undying love, Dale figured it left
a bit to be desired, but Hazel glowed at the compliment.

  “Dale, they’re going to freeze in about five minutes,” Tansy murmured, nudging him in the side. “Damp is one thing, soaking wet is another.”

  He nodded. “Yeah.” Raising his voice over the freshening wind, he said, “Go back down, both of you. You’ll catch your deaths if you stay up here.”

  The words seemed oddly prophetic.

  “I’m fine,” Trask declared, standing up and staunchly wringing out the tails of his shirt. “That’s my wife we’re searching for. I want to stay.”

  Hazel closed her eyes, and a look of exquisite pain washed across her features.

  Tansy faced Trask, hands on hips, crowding into his personal space with her jaw thrust out and her eyes blazing. “Your wife is dead.” When Trask fell back a step, Tansy advanced. “Hazel is here, not Suzie. Hazel. She needs you, Trask, and you’re damn well going to get your head out of your past and give her what she needs, got it?”

  “Tansy, this isn’t necessary,” Hazel said quietly, climbing to her feet. “Let him go. He needs to find his wife, and Roberts must be stopped. I’ll walk back down and lock myself in the jeep. Take this, you’ll need it.” She handed the shotgun to Tansy.

  With as much dignity as she could muster, bedraggled and sopping wet, the island’s doctor turned and stomped back down the path, squishing as she went.

  The others stood motionless for a moment. Dale stared at Hazel’s retreating back, wondering what had just happened and feeling somehow guilty for it. Tansy stared at Trask, jaw clenched, fury in her eye.

  Finally, Trask cursed and strode after Hazel, seeming more powerful soaking wet rather than less. At the verge of the heavy growth, he turned back. “Take care of yourself, boy.” Dale felt the punch of his uncle’s concern and felt a small, scared wish that it hadn’t taken fifteen years for him to return to the is land. Then Trask jerked his chin toward Tansy. “And take care of her, you hear?”

  And that small, scared boy’s wish coalesced into a man’s determination. Nothing was going to harm his Tansy. Nothing.