Half Moon Bay

by Meryl Sawyer

  “Come on, babe. You can do it. Try.”

  Amy cracked one eye. The light blinded her, and she snapped her lid shut, waited a few seconds, then allowed her eyes to slowly drift open. Something was covering her eyes, making it difficult to see where she was. She seemed to be peeking through a cloud.

  No, not a cloud. Gauze. Her eyes were bandaged, she realized through a hazy watercolor wash of drugs and pain. All she could see was a sliver of light seeping through the gauze.

  A man was beside her bed. Silhouetted in the diffuse light of the gauze, the man’s eyes were moody brown, unreadable. He embodied the frightening but irresistible combination of sensuality and danger.

  Tension was evident in the rigid set of his broad shoulders and in his square, tight jaw. Yet he was holding her hand in both of his with such tenderness that her pain seemed a small price to pay.

  No man had held her hand. Ever.

  Why now? And why did this man seem familiar?

  Her baffled mind attempted to decipher the facts, but the ruggedly masculine man distracted her. He wasn’t looking at her face. He was staring into the distance, something unsettling in his gaze. Suddenly, her brain began to function.

  “Oh, my God. What is he doing here?” she silently asked herself.

  She closed her eyes, raw emotion filling her soul with a hot rush of humiliation too intense to ever be forgotten. She must be imagining this. It couldn’t be Trent Hastings, could it?

  There had to be a logical answer, but her groggy mind refused to sort out the facts. She drifted along for a moment, drawn back in time remembering Trent Hastings’s melt-your-heart grin.

  In a dreamlike trance, she tumbled backward in time—lost in the dark void of unconsciousness once more. Suddenly she was sixteen again, walking down the high school corridor.

  Alone.

  By then Amy’s birthmark had forced her to develop protective emotional armor. Polite people looked away, pretending not to notice her, but an amazing number of others did not She was accustomed to stares and giggles and pointing fingers. She kept quiet, not wanting to draw attention to herself.

  “Why can’t you make friends?” her mother had asked, genuinely puzzled.

  For many years, she’d been alone, never wanting or needing companionship. Then puberty struck—although she hadn’t known what to call it back then—and she became aware of boys in an entirely different way.

  Despite her better judgment, she found herself watching Trent Hastings, the school’s star quarterback. And pretending he would invite her to the prom. Night after night she dreamed about dancing with him. She’d even dared to imagine he kissed her.

  By the light of day, stark reality wrenched her back to earth. Trent was handsome and had his pick of girls. He’d never even noticed her, not once looking her way.

  Then one day Trent glanced in her direction as she walked up to her locker. Seen in profile, Amy knew her nose was a touch too long, but she had inherited her mother’s natural blond hair and full breasts. She kept her good side to him, hoping he’d go by with his friends without getting a close look at her.

  “Hi, there,” Trent said as he passed.

  Amy kept her head down, not wanting him to make fun of her the way so many boys did. Please, God, let him keep walking. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him stop and leave his friends. Her heart plummeted to the pit of her belly, triggering a sickening lurch. She managed to get her locker open and stuck her head inside, pretending to be searching for something.

  “You must be new,” he said as he came up to her. “I haven’t seen you around. I’m Trent Hastings.”

  Amy had wished herself invisible dozens of times, but never—ever—had she wanted to disappear more than she did right now. Her good side toward him, she managed to say, “I’m Amy Conroy.”

  With an adorable smile, he leaned one shoulder against the bank of lockers. “So, Amy, do you like football?”

  For a moment she pretended she was an ordinary girl flirting with the school hero. It felt … right. Just once in her life she would like to be normal and have some boy smile at her and ask her out.

  It wasn’t too much to want, was it? She didn’t yearn to be special. Average-looking without the hideous birthmark would be pure heaven. Imagine walking with her head high, not driven by sheer pride, but because it was the natural thing to do. Then talking to boys would be easy too.

  But in the back of her head, she heard her mother whispering: Character determines fate.

  She wasn’t an ordinary girl; she was extraordinarily repulsive. That was her fate, and there was no sense pretending otherwise. Or feeling sorry for herself. She mustered the courage to face him.

  “I’ve never been to a football game.”

  Trent’s cocky smile vanished in a heartbeat. He looked as if he’d just been clobbered by a three-hundred-pound tackle. He stepped back, muttering, “It’s a great game.”

  Amy’s cheeks were flaming hot as she turned toward her locker again. Behind her, she heard Trent talking to his friends.

  “Jee—sus! I thought beauty and the beast were two people, not one.”

  Pain arced through Amy’s body in a searing explosion that singed every nerve ending and left her sweating beneath the sheet. She tried to shriek for help, to cry out against the blinding agony. But her mouth wouldn’t open. The scream stalled in her throat and she gagged.

  Oh, my God! She couldn’t move her lips. She couldn’t say one word.

  What was wrong?

  Her mind scrambled to interpret the messages it could barely understand through the miasma of pain. She had been dreaming about Trent Hastings and something silly that had happened long, long ago.

  Before Dexxter Foxx.

  She forced her eyes open as all-encompassing terror hit her, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Her former employer wouldn’t stop until he killed her. Like a puzzle with just one piece missing, the past fell into place. The piercing screech of brakes and the explosion of glass reverberated in her ears, an echo of the crash.

  The dead federal marshal. The trunk with the notebook in it. Flying through the air. Screaming for God to save Jiggs.

  On the verge of sheer panic, she stared through something cloudlike, obscuring her gaze. She blinked hard, but her lashes were restricted by something that was not a cloud.

  Through slitted lids she noted the banks of machines, wires, tubes. A stringent smell assailed her nostrils, a too-clean scent. Then she noticed a woman in a nearby bed.

  A patient, obviously. She must be in a hospital.

  “Thank God,” she said to herself. “I’m alive. Maybe Jiggs made it too.”

  For a moment she marveled at having survived the crash and thought about the little dog she’d rescued. Her initial elation vanished, wiped away first by another wave of pain, then by the realization she was trapped in a bed. Something was clamping her jaw shut, and the right side of her body was hooked up to a pulley attached to the ceiling.

  She could move her left arm and leg—if she ignored the harrowing pain—but it would be impossible to get out of the bed. Fear coursed through her almost as powerful as the pain. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Dexxter would find her now.

  “You’re as good as dead,” she silently told herself.

  Voices coming closer interrupted her thoughts. Through the narrow slit in the gauze she saw a man in a white coat with a stethoscope draped over his shoulders. She assumed he was the doctor, but who was the man with him?

  He was taller than the doctor and had rugged, squared-off shoulders and a powerful chest that tapered to a trim waist. He was the man she’d seen by her bed earlier. Her dazed mind had confused him with Trent Hastings, a boy she’d known in high school.

  Through the screen of gauze and lowered lashes she studied him and discovered this man bore only a passing resemblance to Trent. Thick, dark, tousled hair. An angular jaw bristling with several days’ stubble. Long legs in khaki shorts and strong arms hanging down beside them.r />
  He wasn’t handsome, but he was attractive in a masculine way she found slightly threatening. Other than Dexxter and the priest who had given her mother last rites, she had zero experience with men. This man was more than she could handle—if she’d been in any shape to do it.

  “You’ve been talking to her and she’s not responding,” the doctor said.

  “I was here all morning, then I took a quick break for coffee,” answered the stranger. “I came back and spent the last three hours trying to persuade her to wake up.”

  Who was this dangerous-looking man? Why was he here? The scowl that grooved his brow and the grim set of his mouth were chilling. He had to be one of Dexxter’s men.

  She shut her eyes, aware of how close they were to her bed and not wanting them to know she was conscious. An alarm bell sounded inside her brain. The stranger was waiting for her to die. If she didn’t, he would kill her, just the way Dexxter’s man had murdered the federal marshal.

  “Look at the monitor,” said the man.

  She realized pulse-pounding fear had accelerated her heart rate. One of the machines off to the side was furiously bleeping. She held her breath, hoping to slow the frantic beating of her heart.

  Her eyes were shut, but she could sense them hovering over her, watching, ready to detect any movement. Like a kettledrum’s tat-tat-tat, her heart beat against her temples. She struggled to steady her breathing, to appear comatose again.

  “A fluctuation,” she heard the doctor say. “It happens.”

  If she could have smiled, she would have, but she was a prisoner bound by gauze and chained to the bed by myriad tubes and wires. Still, she’d managed to fool them.

  A deeper voice with a husky catch dashed her hopes. “Look at her hand.”

  With a start, she realized her left hand was balled into a fist. Soothing fingers brushed her knuckles, then carefully traced around the IV shunt. She held her breath again, uncertain what the stranger wanted. He seemed too gentle to be one of Dexxter’s hired guns, but she couldn’t let down her guard.

  Slowly, with unimaginable tenderness, her hand was cradled by two warm, masculine hands. “I think she’s regaining consciousness.”

  His words almost made her open her eyes to look more closely at him, but she didn’t dare. It could be a trick. Pretending to be unconscious was her only hope.

  The next few minutes stretched into two lifetimes as she battled to control her breathing to keep her heartbeat normal. All the while, strong, warm fingers stroked her hand.

  “Shelly, come on. Wake up.”

  Who was Shelly? Why would Dexxter’s man call her by that name?

  “She’s not responding.” The doctor sounded bored. “I think—”

  “Matt, Matt,” interrupted a strange voice. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  His hands released hers, leaving her chilled. Chafing noises like shirts brushing and clapping of backs followed. She ventured a quick peek and saw a strikingly handsome blond man bear-hugging the stranger whose name was Matt.

  “I read your note,” said the blond man as she snapped her eyes shut. “I waited for you to come back to Half Moon Bay, but—”

  “I thought Shelly would regain consciousness sooner than she has.”

  “Shelly? You mean Rochelle Ralston?”

  The way the blond man said the name made it sound like a four-letter word. Who on earth was Rochelle Ralston? Why did they think she was this woman? Could they be discussing the blonde driving the car?

  “Yeah, it’s Shelly,” replied the husky voice of the dark-haired stranger. “I made a few phone calls. After she was fired from her job at the National Reporter, she went for months without work. She was offered a job with the Key West Daily. That’s why she was driving down here.”

  “So? Let her family and friends look after her.”

  “She has no family. I spoke with the people who worked with her in New York this morning. Shelly has one friend, but the woman can’t come down here for a few weeks. I’m—”

  “All she’s got.”

  There was something unnerving in both men’s attitudes, but she didn’t stop to wonder what it might be. Instead, she concentrated on the fact that the dark-haired stranger she’d initially confused with Trent Hastings wasn’t a man to fear. For now Dexxter Foxx had no idea where she was.

  Thank you, God.

  With that comforting thought, the world tipped and slowly became fuzzy. Then darkness claimed her again, dragging her into the netherworld in a second.

  By degrees she awoke, realizing someone was changing her bed or bandages or something. Someone rough and uncaring. Through the gauze she saw a male nurse looming over her. He snapped the sheet, then shoved it under the mattress.

  A lightning bolt of pain racked her body, threatening to make her black out. Pinpricks of searing red dots danced before her eyes. Her head ached as if a rusty hatchet had hacked way and hacked away until her head … split open.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  But her words were nothing more than a silent scream in her own brain. The man yanked a tube from her arm and jammed in a replacement. Nurses weren’t supposed to treat patients like this, she told herself.

  “I’m going on a break,” called a soft female voice.

  “Okay. I’ve got them handled,” the male nurse replied.

  Them? Dimly, she recalled there had been another person in the room with her. She cracked one eye a fraction of an inch and saw the bed across the room and the form of a woman lying flat, tubes and wires coming from every part of her body.

  “That’s what I look like,” she silently told herself.

  A wave of helplessness like nothing she’d ever known overwhelmed her. For her entire life a disfiguring birthmark had isolated her, making her a loner with no one to turn to, no one to call a friend. But this was much worse.

  Like the woman in the other bed, all she had was a bank of machines to help her. Yet those machines weren’t human. She couldn’t tell them about the crippling pain or protest about the brute of a nurse.

  Simple communication was impossible. She was a prisoner in her own body. She clenched her fist, fear and anger welling up inside her as her frustration mounted. She was alone, more alone than she’d been when the disfiguring birthmark branded her a freak.

  “Oh, oh … oh,” moaned the woman in the other bed.

  The nurse left her and walked over to the woman. From a tray beside the bed, he picked up a syringe. He held it up and squirted a bit of fluid out of it before inserting it into the shunt in the woman’s arm.

  “What about me?” she silently asked. She could almost feel the wave of release as the painkilling medication flowed through the woman’s veins. “Give me a shot too.”

  Her silent prayer went unanswered. Now her lungs burned with each breath as the pain continued to mount, weakening her with every second. Across the room, she saw the nurse toss the syringe onto the tray. For a moment he stood over the woman, who was now unconscious, a sullen look on his face.

  He moved so his back was to her, blocking her view. She squinted, trying to see what was happening through the restrictive gauze. Evidently, the nurse was changing the woman’s bedding or something.

  She hoped he was being more gentle with the other patient. He must be, she decided; he was taking longer with her. The woman had received a shot of what had to be a painkiller. Why hadn’t she been given one?

  Unexpectedly, she heard her mother talking, but Amy couldn’t quite make out what she was saying. Amy supposed she was going to die, or perhaps she was already dead. How else could she hear a dead woman’s voice?

  A few minutes later the nurse finally turned toward her, and she realized she was still alive. The strange look on his face sent a prickle of alarm across the back of her neck. He walked over to her and picked up the syringe from the tray beside her bed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a small plume of liquid shoot into the air.

  “Yes … yes,” she silently cried. />
  He hadn’t once looked at her face and didn’t see the desperate pleading in her eyes. “It’s all right,” she told herself. “He’s going to give you a painkiller.”

  A hank of ginger-brown hair fell across his forehead, and he brushed it back with his sleeve. His face was average, but something odd in his almond-shaped eyes made her apprehensive. Maybe he wasn’t preparing a painkiller.

  Dexxter Foxx might have sent him.

  “Matt, where are you?” she tried to scream, but her jaw remained locked shut. “Help me! Please, help me.”

  He inserted the needle.

  A rush of relief like a Tsunami wave hit her a second later. Her body seemed dangerously light, nearly weightless—the wrenching pain no longer torturing her. If she could have smiled at the male nurse, she would have.

  Until she gazed up through the slits in the gauze.

  He was lifting the sheet covering her body and didn’t notice that she was still conscious. Watching. Suspicion mushroomed inside her as she realized what was happening.

  She yelled for help, but no sound escaped her lips. Instead, the scream ricocheted through her brain, a desperate plea no one could hear. His hands slipped under the sheet just as her world faded to black.

  Chapter 4

  The pink edge of dawn slowly reclaimed the night sky as Matt woke up. For a moment he didn’t remember where he was. The rhythmic swish of the ceiling fan above his head reminded him that he was in one of Trevor’s guest suites. He’d left Shelly early last evening and come home with Trevor. Matt had dropped into bed, and he was certain he’d fallen asleep before his head touched the down pillow.

  Trevor hadn’t questioned Matt about why he’d so unexpectedly decided to visit Key West for the first time in years. Typical. Trevor had a relaxed, easygoing attitude toward life. He let people tell him about themselves in their own time and in their own way.

  Matt threw back the sheet and climbed out of bed naked. The limestone floor beneath his bare feet was cool as he crossed the room to watch the sunrise. He closed the plantation shutters and folded them back so the morning light could fill the room.