In Close

Paintings? Unless whoever pushed her down had stolen them, she hadn’t been carrying any paintings. Some file folders had spilled on the floor. That was what she’d had with her, but when Isaac opened his mouth to correct her, she shot him a look that shut him up.

“I didn’t know I wasn’t alone until I was leaving,” she said.

“You went to get these paintings at night?” Dr. Hunt wasn’t questioning her veracity, but he obviously thought there were better times for such an errand.

“I didn’t care that it was dark. I had a flashlight.” She sent another warning glance at Isaac, but he’d gotten the point. She didn’t want the doctor to know what she’d been doing at the cabin. Why, Isaac couldn’t even guess. But as far as he was concerned, it was no one’s business but her own. He let it go.

Hunt passed her a clean bandage, which she held to her head. “And someone was waiting for you or…what?”

Seemingly relieved that Isaac was staying out of it, she finished in a rush. “I can’t say for sure. All I know is that a man came at me, knocked my flashlight to the ground and shoved me so hard I fell.”

“Any idea what you might’ve hit on the way down?”

“The corner of the table in the entryway, I guess. The entire bottom floor is filled with furniture.” She cleared her throat. “Everyone feels it’s the perfect place to store whatever they don’t want anymore.”

It wasn’t the storage that bothered her; it was how easily others could deposit their cast-offs, forget the past and move on, because she couldn’t do the same. Isaac understood. He’d known Claire since they were children and empathized with what she’d been through. He’d lost his mother, too. She might have driven off on purpose, but he’d had to face life without her. He’d been searching just like Claire—the biggest difference being that he hadn’t had a stepfather to rely on. Fortunately in recent years he’d had the money to hire private investigators. Without so much as a birth certificate, it hadn’t been easy to figure out where he came from.

Hunt checked for other injuries. “You know where you are now, don’t you?”

A nostalgic expression appeared on her face. “This used to be my parents’ bedroom,” she said as if she was seeing it through much younger eyes. “My bedroom was across the hall. So was Leanne’s. When we moved to town, we sold it to a family who later went to Spokane. You remember Rod Reynolds?”

“I do.” Almost twenty years older than they were, Dr. Hunt had left for college about the time Isaac had been abandoned at Happy’s Inn, just before first grade. But Hunt hadn’t stayed away for much longer than it took to get his medical degree. He was familiar with most of the people in Pineview and their backgrounds.

Especially Isaac’s. But then…everyone was familiar with the story of the little boy who’d been left, with nothing but the dollar he’d been given to buy candy, at a roadside café.

Distracted by a bowl of water on the nightstand, Hunt pointed to it. “This from you?” he asked Isaac.

The pink tinge to the water had no doubt prompted the question. “’Fraid not. You’re the one who said head wounds bleed a lot. Apparently, that’s true.” Isaac could’ve done a better job cleaning Claire up if he’d shaved her hair at the site of her wound, but he was pretty sure that would only make her hate him more.

Hunt frowned at the bloody rag Isaac held to his injury. “Chest wounds can bleed a lot, too.”

Now that the doctor wasn’t so worried about Claire, he wanted to get started on Isaac. Isaac could tell.

Claire could tell, too. She began to insist he look after Isaac, but Isaac waved away her concern. “Finish here first.”

With a muttered curse at Isaac’s stubbornness, Hunt used a penlight to check Claire’s pupils. “What did you do earlier today, Claire?”

“What do you mean?” Like the doctor, she’d grown preoccupied with Isaac’s wound.

“I’m just asking about your day in general.”

“Oh.” Her forehead creased as if she didn’t see the point of further questioning, especially when someone else was bleeding, but Hunt was only being thorough. “I worked.”

Isaac wondered if she still regretted being unable to attend university. She’d talked about college just after high school, back when David was gone and they were seeing each other. During that time, she’d been treading water with a dead-end job managing Stuart’s Stop ’n’ Shop. But Leanne had been going through a series of operations, which her doctors hoped would restore some mobility, and Claire wouldn’t leave her. “Can you remember who you saw?”

“Let’s see…I did a cut and color for Joyce Sallow, a trim for Larry Morrill and a highlight for Alexis Rodgers.”

“You were busy. Where’s your sister tonight?”

“At the fireworks show. See? I’m fine. Just…shaken up. And my head’s killing me but that’s to be expected,” she added. “Take care of Isaac.”

“I will in a minute. And I’ll give you something for the pain, too.” Hunt recorded her blood pressure and heart rate. Then the doorbell rang and Isaac stepped out to answer. Sheriff King had arrived.

Not surprisingly, Myles’s first thought was for Claire. But Isaac’s injury didn’t go unnoticed. “What happened to you?”

“Collateral damage,” he replied. “She’s in here.”

Going along with the diversion, Myles followed Isaac into the bedroom. Claire was his wife’s best friend; he was obviously more concerned about her. But Isaac had a feeling they’d return to the subject of his injury at some point, if only to see how it related to the attack at the cabin. King was nothing if not thorough. And Isaac wasn’t the most trusted man in town.

“She’ll be fine,” Hunt said as they entered. “I’m going to sew up this cut. That’ll take care of the bleeding. She should be watched, just in case she has a slight concussion. But this isn’t serious.”

“Good. Can the stitches wait until I have a word with her?” the sheriff wanted to know.

“Are you up to talking with Sheriff King for a few minutes?” Hunt asked Claire.

Claire continued to hold the bandage to her head. “Of course. Whatever will help. I want the person who did this caught.”

When King asked for a few minutes alone with her, the doctor and Isaac left the room. Then Hunt insisted Isaac lie down so he could inspect the gash on his chest.

“Damn. This one’s jagged and nasty,” he said with a frown.

Isaac cocked an eyebrow at him. “Nice bedside manner. Aren’t you supposed to tell me to relax, everything will be okay?”

Hunt grinned. “You can take it. You’re the closest I’ve come to creating my own rag doll. You know the routine by now.”

Thanks to several encounters with various wild animals, he did. Although he’d been out alone, filming wildlife since he was in junior high—camera equipment was all he’d ever asked for, and what Tippy, the man who’d raised him, had generously provided—it wasn’t until he’d gotten older that he’d been harmed. He blamed himself for being careless or becoming too cavalier. But, his fault or not, that bear he’d tangled with four years ago had nearly cost him his left arm. And there might be more incidents in the future. That kind of danger went with his job. He had to get close enough to his subjects to capture good footage. That was what made his work better than most. Not only had he come within arm’s distance of bears and wolves, he’d filmed cougars, moose, bison and elk. He’d flown to Florida to do a documentary on alligators, and the Amazon to do a show on spiders, and another on snakes for the Disney channel. In the past decade, he’d been all over the world—not bad for an abandoned kid who was almost entirely self-taught.

“How long’s it been since you’ve had a tetanus shot?” The doctor spoke as he numbed the area.

“When I was attacked by that bear.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t the time before that—with the wolves?”

“No, it was the bear.” It’d been almost seven years since the incident with the wolves. He’d had a gun with him on that occasion. Firing a shot into the sky had mitigated the damage. He wasn’t sure how he’d survived mama bear. From what he remembered, she simply got distracted and galloped off.

“I’m glad one of us can keep it straight,” Hunt grumbled.

He was in the middle of stitching Isaac up when the sheriff came out of the bedroom.

“Any idea who attacked Claire?” he asked Isaac.

A local anesthetic had put Isaac out of pain. “No.”

“You didn’t see anything?”

“Headlights.”

“How’d you know she was hurt?”