Body Search

“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.