Body Search

“Almost there,” she murmured, more to herself than Dale.

“Great.” He bit off a curse and she felt another flash of annoyance.

“If you’re going to snarl at me every time I open my mouth, this is going to be a very long investigation, Metcalf.”

“This from the woman who’s called me a ‘slimy toad’ whenever she’s seen me for the past three months?” His knuckles whitened. “You wanted happily ever after. I wanted to be friends. The two don’t mix, Tansy.”

It still hurt that their breakup hadn’t crushed him like it had crushed her. Then again, that was part of the problem. “Never mind,” she snapped. “Forget I was about to suggest a truce. Let’s just keep biting each other’s heads off and hope the patients don’t notice.”

The little plane dropped down through the last fifty feet of air and the rocky bulk of the island flashed beneath them. Their airspeed bled from a hundred miles per hour to eighty, then slower.

Dale sighed heavily and reached out a hand as though to touch her, but he didn’t. “Tansy, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to fight with you. But this is…awkward for me.”

The first of the runway lights glinted below the plane and Tansy brought it down expertly, letting the wheels kiss the smooth, shadowed tarmac. “It’s awkward because of me. Because of us.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Or at least, not entirely. It’s the island. You see, I was born—”

Crack! A horrendous jolt yanked the control yoke from Tansy’s fingers. Her body slammed against the shoulder harness and the plane bottomed out, hard, on the runway.

“Christ!” Dale yelled, grabbing for a handhold. “Hang on!”

No time. There was no time for hanging on. Sparks flashed by the windows, brighter than the sunset. Metal screamed.

“Dale! The landing gear’s collapsed!” Fear grabbed Tansy by the throat. Control. She was out of control.

The little plane slid sideways down the runway at almost fifty miles per hour. Metal ground against asphalt, and sparks spewed higher against the dusky sky. She fought the useless yoke for a few seconds before letting it go. She glanced out the cockpit window. There weren’t any buildings to hit at the end of the runway, thank God.

Then her stomach dropped. “The runway ends!” she shrieked. “Dale! The ocean!”

“Hang on, baby. Hang on!” Somehow, their hands twined together. Their eyes caught and held as the plane slid over the end of the runway and tilted down.

Metal howled. The plane slammed against something. It twisted and fell, bounced, and continued to fall until they hit bottom, hard.

Tansy’s head smacked into the side window.

First, she saw watery stars.

Then she saw nothing.

Chapter Two

The endless moment of freefall was sickening. Dale’s stomach lodged in his throat, then dropped when they hit bottom and Tansy’s head cracked into the side window. She sagged against her safety belt.

“Tansy! Tansy, stay with me. I need you to stay with me!” The words were rote, the feeling beneath them anything but. Panic roared in Dale’s ears. Then he realized it wasn’t just panic.

It was the sound of waves breaking on the plane. They’d fallen into the bay. And Tansy was unconscious.

“Damn!” He yanked free of his belt and struggled to his feet, hunching down in the small cockpit space. The cold, salty water of Lobster Bay splashed around his ankles. God, he hated the ocean.

The floor tilted by degrees as the weight of the engine pulled the front of the plane down. Heart pounding, hands shaking, he glanced out the forward window. In the crimson of twilight, he could see wavelets and greasy, gray water edging up the nose of the plane.

How long until the tower sent help? How long would the little plane float?

Working quickly, he checked Tansy’s vitals. “Tansy! Tansy, sweetheart, wake up. We need to get out of here, baby.” The endearments slipped out, though he’d rarely used them when they had been a couple. At least not out loud.

How deep was the water just past the landing strip? He didn’t remember. He hoped it was shallow. Lobster Bay was tricky that way. But even four feet of water would be too much if he couldn’t get them out of the plane before it flooded.

Tansy stirred, and relief rattled through him. He could get her out. He had to get her out.

“Flotation,” he muttered, knowing that HFH stocked their planes with life jackets as well as the standard cushions. He bypassed the field equipment crammed in the back and yanked the jackets from their compartment. His hands were still shaking. What was wrong with him?

“You’ve worked outbreaks in Tehru and terrorist bombings in the Middle East,” he reprimanded himself. “Two people in a sinking plane should be a piece of cake.” He stilled his hands by force of will, but he couldn’t stop the lurch of his heart when he returned to Tansy’s side and she opened her eyes.

The knowledge hit him like a fist to the gut. This wasn’t a stranger in Tehru or the Middle East. This was Tansy.

And that made all the difference.

“Dale? What—?” Pain and sudden comprehension clouded her eyes. “We crashed. The landing gear broke.” She turned her head towards the storage space and winced. “We’ve got to grab the field kits and get out of here.”

“Put this on first,” he ordered, helping her into the jacket over her protests. “We’re in the water and I don’t know how long we’ll float. Forget about the equipment.”

“The hell I will. We have an outbreak to work.” Listing to one side as the plane sagged beneath her, Tansy stumbled to the cargo area. She fumbled with the straps securing their instruments. “The cases are shockproof and rigged to float. We’ll get as many as we can out the door before we jump.”

The floor tilted even further and water surged up to cover most of the cockpit window, blocking out the bloody light of dusk. Dale cursed under his breath. “There’s no time for the equipment, Tansy! Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“We’ve got time. Help me with this,” she demanded.

He clenched his teeth. Stubborn. She’d always been stubborn, and more concerned with the patients’ safety than her own. At times it scared him and drove him crazy. Other times it made him proud.

This was one of those crazy times.

“We’re getting out. Now.” In the near-blackness, he looped an arm around her waist and dragged her to the door, grimacing when the floor tilted beneath his feet and metal groaned sickeningly.

The plane was rolling in the water.

“Get the door!” she yelled, finally ready to abandon the equipment. “We’re going down!”

“Hurry!” Dale yanked his jacket over his head and tried to help her crank the door release. In a flash, he imagined sinking to the bottom of the ocean with Tansy, trapped in the half-open cockpit. Drowned. Like his parents. “No!” he shouted, and jammed his shoulder against the door.

It cracked open, followed by a gush of water.

“Dale!” Tansy grabbed for him when he lost his footing and went down between the angled seats.

He bobbed up and spat a mouthful of cold, salty water. “Go! Get the hell out of here.”

“Not without you,” she yelled back. “Come on, we’ll jump together and swim away.”

Dale knew there’d be suction when the plane went down. They had to get away, and fast. He scrambled to the door, kicking a pair of floating equipment cases out of the way, and boosted Tansy out the door as a wave crested over the plane and swamped the cockpit.

He choked, spitting more seawater. God, he hated the taste.

“Dale, come on. Hurry! I don’t think it’ll float much longer.”

He hauled himself through and jumped. His foot slipped on wet metal and he landed almost in the plane’s shadow. The water was cold and harsh.

Like coming home.

Striking out hard, he saw Tansy paddling for all she was worth. Not fast enough.

He was a strong swimmer. He’d had to be, growing up on an island with one of the highest lost-at-sea rates in the Northeast. He grabbed Tansy’s jacket and struck out for the beach, hauling her along over her feeble protests. The lights on shore slowly grew closer, though part of him wished they wouldn’t.

Halfway there, he heard the unforgettable hiss-chug sound of a lobster boat’s engine. He tamped down the memories and lifted an arm to the shabby-looking vessel that slowly approached out of the twilight. “Over here!”

“’Hoy there, did everyone make it out?” The man’s voice was muffled by wind and wave, but it sounded familiar.

If he weren’t already freezing wet, Dale might have shivered as childhood ghosts crammed his brain in a sudden rush. He blinked against them and focused on the cold, hard water and the woman beside him. He raised his voice and called, “Yes. Everyone’s out.”

It was a lucky thing, too, he thought as the last slice of wing disappeared into the oily, black sea. The water just beyond the runway must be deeper than he remembered, or else the tide was running high. He felt a twinge of remorse for the field kits that had seen them through so many tough assignments, so many exotic locales. The cases were waterproof, but he doubted they were that waterproof.

“Hang tight,” the helmsman shouted over the noise of the waves and the motor, “we’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.” The near-derelict boat lurched through the surf and Dale could just read the faded name on its bow. Churchill IV.

The name brought a twist of guilt. Dale had promised his parents’ friend, Walter Churchill, that once he left the island he’d make a new life for himself and never look back. Well, he was back, and so far it had been a hell of a homecoming.

“Climb aboard, you two. What the heck happened to your plane?” The helmsman steered the Churchill IV in close, and another rain-suited figure leaned over and tossed a thick, greasy rope.

“We crashed,” Dale answered shortly, though he wanted to know the same thing. One moment, Tansy had been landing as deftly as ever, and the next, the plane was sliding down the runway on its belly.

It made no sense.

He helped her aboard, then scrambled into the boat in a motion that came back easily after all these years. He checked on Tansy. She was pale and shivering, though the men had wrapped her in a coarse, soggy wool blanket. “You okay?”

“Never better,” she answered with a crooked smile that squeezed his chest.

Her aplomb was ruined by a thin trickle of blood from a cut on her temple, and the fine tremble of her lower lip. He took a step towards her. “Tansy—”

“I’m fine, Dale. Really.” She leaned away.

He knelt down in front of her and took her chilled hands in his own. “Tans—”

She pulled free and stood as the helmsman gestured his companion to the wheel and strode over. The boat’s running lights picked out the glittering tracks of salt spray that trickled down his yellow rain suit. A billed hood cast the man’s face in deep shadow, but there was something familiar about the rolling walk, the wide, powerful shoulders. A chill skittered through Dale.

Letters and a phone call hadn’t prepared him for this. Not really.

The slickered figure lifted a hand and pushed back his hood to reveal a shock of white-blond hair above a weather-beaten face that might once have been pale. The man’s tired blue eyes were clear, but dulled with worry. Dale steeled himself to shake the proffered hand. “Mickey.” He saw the face of a boy beneath that of the man. “It’s been a long time.”

“Welcome home, Cousin Dale.” Mick nodded and glanced down at Tansy, who sagged against the railing. “And you’d be Dr. Whitmore. Welcome to Lobster Island. I’m sorry for your plane, but thank God you’re both all right.”

Dale let the voice wash over him as he tried to fit Mickey’s image to the memories he’d carried for fifteen years. They’d been as close as brothers until the day Dale’s family had gone down in a ferocious spring storm, leaving the seventeen-year-old at the mercy of his grief-maddened uncle.

Trask. Even the memory of the name brought impotent rage.

“I see some debris. I’ll bring her around to it,” the other slickered man called, interrupting the memory, though not the anger.

“Some of the cases may have washed out of the plane,” Dale said harshly, trying to find his doctor’s focus. The job, he thought. Focus on the job. “Pick up as much of the equipment as you can. We’ll need it to investigate your shellfish poisoning.”

At his elbow, Tansy was ghost-white. Guilt seared through him, layered atop the anger. He should have told her about the island. He should have prepared her better for the shock of learning that this poor, wretched place had once been his home. That these people were his family, such as it was.

Mick muttered a dark curse at the mention of the outbreak. “It’s bad, or I wouldn’t have asked you to come. We’ve had three deaths since I called, and another two sick, including the mayor and the sheriff.”

Dread curled through Dale, though he hid it deep down with all the other emotions.

“That’s impossible,” Tansy said after a moment. “PSP isn’t fatal, and certainly not in those numbers.” Dale could see her mind working.

Personal problems, plane crashes, the cold and the wet faded to the background as his mind clicked over to field mode alongside hers. “You’ve had more cases?” he asked. “I thought the fisheries people locked down all your lobster traps.”

Mickey cursed and jerked his chin toward the dock, dark in the gathering twilight. Black, boat-shaped shadows bobbed gently at their moorings. “The fleet hasn’t put to sea in over a week. The catches were bad after the spring storms, but this is a disaster. If we don’t get the docks open, the whole island will be hungry by winter. That’s why I asked you to come.” He glanced out to the end of the marked runway. The landing lights shone bright in the darkness. “Though you almost didn’t make it. What the hell happened?”

Tansy answered with a tiny quiver in her voice. “It was like the landing gear…collapsed. Or maybe it fell off. But that doesn’t make sense. Landing gear doesn’t just fall off.”

A shiver started deep in Dale’s gut. No, landing gear didn’t just fall off.

Not unless it had help.

IT WAS RIDICULOUS, TANSY knew, to think the crash had been anything but an accident. Accidents happened. A pothole in the runway could have snapped a weakened strut. She might have missed a loose nut in her preflight check, or a bolt could have sheared.

But that didn’t explain why both wheels failed at once.

She glanced over at Dale, deep in conversation with his cousin, and she felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. She didn’t understand what was happening. Chillier than a corpse, she pulled the wet wool blanket tighter. Control. She wasn’t in control of the situation. Knowledge is power. She knew nothing. And her head hurt like hell.

When they reached the dock, Dale jumped from the wet, unsteady boat with a practiced motion that made him look like someone other than the man she’d known for so long, the man she’d once thought herself in love with. He took her hand and helped her stumble onto the dock with a good deal less grace than he’d shown.

“Come on. We’ll go to the motel and scrounge some dry clothes.” His voice was almost the same, but she knew the man beside her even less than she’d known him when they had been lovers. Now, his perfectly groomed hair was plastered to his skull with salt water. The fine linen shirt, monogrammed at the cuff and collar, was ripped askew, and she could see the shadowy old tattoo she’d always assumed was a scorpion. She’d had to assume. He’d refused to answer questions about the tattoo. But the scorpion-shadow had never quite meshed with the urbane polish of his Boston self.

In the glare of the lobster boat’s running lights, something flickered in the back of his blue eyes. Something uncivilized.

Without really meaning to, Tansy took a step back. “Dale?”

This time it was irritation that sparked in his eyes. “I told you to stay in Boston, Tansy. You don’t belong here.”

“Neither do you,” she countered. “We’re here to do a job.” But she wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to convince. She shivered from the cold, and from the strangeness of it all.

The poised, elegant Dale Metcalf she knew from Boston would have slid an arm around her shoulders and shared his warmth—though not his heart. The stranger he’d become the moment he set foot on Lobster Island merely turned away and walked toward shore, calling over his shoulder, “Come on. Let’s get dry. Then we’ll figure out how to get you home.”

“I’m not going home,” she yelled back through chattering teeth. “We have a job to do.”

“You’re going back to Boston and that’s final. I don’t want you here.”

Tansy flinched. They’d been broken up for three months now. The thought that he didn’t want her shouldn’t hurt anymore.

She heard the crinkle of a rubber rain suit and felt a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Dr. Whitmore. Let’s get you inside and dried off. That cut on your head should be seen to, as well.”

Miserable from the cold, sick with fear and plagued by an otherworldly feeling, Tansy nodded mutely and followed Dale’s cousin to a windowless old jeep.

The men loaded eight salvaged equipment cases into the vehicle, completely filling the back. Dale climbed in the front and held out a hand. “Come on. You can ride with me.” He patted one knee, though his eyes told her he wished there was another way.

Tansy stalled. They’d ridden sandwiched together in a hundred military vehicles, before and after becoming lovers. With only one or two transports for the HFH equipment and crew, there was rarely room for comfort. It had never bothered her before. It shouldn’t bother her now.

But it did.

Dale saw her hesitation and snapped, “Don’t be foolish. You’re freezing. Get in. I won’t touch you.”

But it was a hard promise to keep when the jeep rocked along the bumpy dirt road and jostled them against each other. After a few minutes, his arms encircled her and pulled her back against his chest.

“Relax,” he whispered. “It’s nothing personal. We’ll be at the motel soon.”

It’s nothing personal. Tansy cursed the surge of hurt, and hated him for not understanding that it was personal. Everything between them was too personal, and not personal enough. It had been personal when they’d become lovers on a thin pallet in Tehru. It had been personal when they’d moved in together on assignment. And it had been very personal when he’d drawn away from her every time they returned to home base.

Eventually, she’d realized he wasn’t letting her in any deeper. Then she’d seen the signs her mother had warned her about. The frequent, unexplained absences. The furtive phone calls. The emotional withdrawal.

When she’d accused him of finding someone else, he hadn’t denied it. He’d let her walk out and he hadn’t come after her. That alone had proven Eva Whitmore’s point. Either you knew a man inside and out or you didn’t. And if you didn’t, you were in for a nasty surprise.

The jeep bumped along, and Tansy realized she’d unconsciously relaxed against Dale, sinking into the familiar spots where they fit together so well. Not strong enough to pull away, she sighed and turned her attention to the view. They passed a row of small cottages that might have been pretty once upon a time. Now, paint peeled from the clapboards and fell into weed-choked planting beds. An empty swing dangled from a tree. The whole area was deserted. Depressed.

Tansy thought it strange to find parallels between an island off Maine and the shattered Third World villages they so often visited for HFH. But the island, like the man, was a surprise. She’d envisioned a quaint old New England fishing village with a healthy tourist trade. This poor, dispirited place was anything but. It might have been charming once, might have been picturesque.

Now, it was just dreary. Dale’s cousin, Mickey, had mentioned a recent stretch of bad lobstering. She bet it had been going on longer than that.

Automatically, she scanned the area, registering the details of the outbreak location. The familiar action soothed her, distanced her from the feel of the man wrapped around her and the memory of the roughest landing of her piloting career.

Why the hell had the landing gear snapped? As soon as she dried off, she’d call the FAA. There would be an investigation, and an answer.

A sudden lurch of the jeep threw her against Dale’s arm and she felt the brush of his thumb along one breast like wildfire. She stifled a gasp as her flesh tightened, and she cursed the flood of wet warmth that swirled at his touch. Her body, it appeared, hadn’t forgotten Dale any more than her heart had.

“Sorry.” He moved his hand and shifted in his seat, and she became aware that hers wasn’t the only body with a memory. She could feel him, hard and ready, against her buttocks. And, God help her, she wanted him with a deep, insistent pulse she hadn’t managed to conquer in the time they’d been apart.

She was no better than her mother, willing to accept so much less than she deserved because of an illusion of love.

They bumped past a low collection of cottages with a No Vacancy sign and a few cars in the lot. “Turn in here,” Dale snapped, his voice rough with a tone that sent a ripple of memory through her. “I left a message reserving rooms.”

Rooms, plural. Tansy hated the flash of disappointment. Of course they weren’t staying together. They were broken up. Finished. She was only on the island because HFH management had insisted Dale take his partner. Tansy thought she might strangle her boss when she got home, which would be sooner than later, if Dale got his way.

Home. It was tempting. She was out of her depth, not in control of the situation. But at the same time, it was clear the outbreak wasn’t as small an issue as she’d thought. If patients were dying, if people needed her, she’d stay.

Especially since her plane was at the bottom of the ocean.

Chilled, she leaned back against Dale. His arm tightened across her waist as Mickey passed the motel and said, “Sorry, there aren’t any vacancies.” He turned onto a dirt track, barely visible in the thin headlight beams. Stunted island trees closed in, reaching soggy branches toward the travelers. “The clinic is too small for all the patients. We’re using the motel as a hospital, and the only available room is being rented by a big-shot real estate developer named Roberts.”

She felt Dale’s body tense. “Where are we sleeping, then?”

In Tehru they had picked the dying up off the streets, carried them into the crumbling hotel rooms and treated them on the beds. The HFH doctors had slept on the floors when they’d slept at all. The lodgings weren’t important. The patients were.

So why did Dale sound upset? Why was his body tense beneath hers? She looked back over her shoulder and saw his eyes dart from the road to the passing land, as though he wanted to look around but couldn’t bear to.

“Your uncle kept the place up,” Mickey said, turning into a narrow drive, toward a sprawling house that looked a few degrees better maintained than the cottages near the water. “Painted it every few years and kept the utilities going, just in case.”

Just in case what? Tansy wanted to ask, but she choked it down.

Fear and curiosity battled with a growing sense of disillusionment as she realized how much of himself Dale had kept hidden. How little he’d really trusted her.

How little he had loved her.

“I couldn’t care less what Trask has or hasn’t done.” The chill in Dale’s tone reminded Tansy of the times she’d pushed him for more and he’d given her less. Cold. He could be so cold.

And she was so confused. What the hell was going on here?

She slid from the jeep and stumbled in a muddy rut. Dale caught her elbow and propped her up. When her feet were steady, he stepped away, attention focused on the cousin, who could have been his weather-beaten twin.

Mickey shook his head. “Your uncle has changed, Dale. I swear it. He’s sorry for what he did back then. You should talk to him.”