Читать книгу The Guardian - Bethany Campbell - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

THE BREEZE CHANGED DIRECTION, making the mangroves drone and sigh as if whispering ancient riddles.

Hawkshaw leaned his elbows on the top railing, not looking at her. The sun made his bare back and shoulders gleam like copper.

“So,” he said, “let’s talk about this mystery man, this stalker.”

Her stomach tightened. “I should go see if Charlie’s ready to wake up.”

“In a minute,” Hawkshaw said. “This guy—he’s been harassing you for a year and a half, right?”

“Yes.” And he’s brought me to this, she thought fatalistically. To depending on the kindness of strangers.

“You have no idea who he is?”

“None.” The word was a knot of gall in her throat. Suddenly, her future loomed before her with all its unspeakable uncertainty.

She was not even sure about her past. Was the stalker someone she knew? She had come to suspect, at one time or another, almost every man she knew.

Hawkshaw turned, almost lazily. He leaned back, his elbows resting on the railing. “So you went to Corbett.”

“I had to do something,” she said with a surge of spirit. “The police couldn’t help. I had to fight back someway.”

“You knew Corbett from before,” he said.

“Only in passing. His office—his and his partner’s—is in the same building as the bookstore. I checked him out. I heard his qualifications were excellent.”

“They are. Frankly, I’m amazed he hasn’t been able to ID this guy.”

She shook her head in frustration. “Every time he thinks he has a lead, it melts, turns into air. It’s like chasing a ghost.”

She knew that Corbett was good. But the stalker was better. Corbett had followed half a hundred clues and hunches, but they’d led only to half a hundred nowheres.

On Corbett’s advice, Kate had changed her phone number six times. She would have changed where she lived, but she could not find a buyer for the condo. She’d come to fear it would not matter if she did. The stalker would always find her, it seemed. She was stymied. So was Corbett.

Now, she who had prided herself on being so independent was on the run. By the harsh light of morning, it seemed an extraordinary and frantic move.

“You told nobody you were leaving Columbia?” he asked.

“Nobody,” she said. “Except my friend in Denver. I said we’d be coming soon. But I didn’t tell her where we’d be until then. I didn’t know myself.”

“And Corbett told nobody,” he said. “Not even his partner?”

“Not even him,” Kate said. She liked Corbett, but not his partner, Bedlingham. Bedlingham was married but flirtatious; to her it seemed he always exuded an air of sly, forbidden sexuality.

“And Corbett’s checked out the men closest to you?”

“Yes,” she said, although there weren’t that many.

George Chandler, her husband’s stepfather. George lived in the city, but he and Chuck had fallen out years ago. They had not socialized, had hardly spoken to each other.

There was Chuck’s brother, Trevor. Trevor lived in Minneapolis, where he was confined to his house because of multiple allergies and never went out. She communicated with him mostly by e-mail because it was cheaper than phoning. She felt guilty, for she had lied to him about what she was doing. She had told him she was taking the computer in for repair and would be out of touch.

And there was her former boss, the bookstore owner, Winston McPhee. McPhee was a kind, fatherly man who’d promised he’d take her back when it could be done. But the stalker had made McPhee’s life hellish with jealous calls day and night, and he’d disrupted the business until Kate knew she had to leave.

“Your father-in-law,” Hawkshaw said. “Your brother-in-law. Your former employer. Corbett’s checked them out. And they seem clean?”

“Yes,” she said, ashamed because at one time she’d suspected each of them. But she had come to look on every man she met with suspicion these days. It was a tense, terrible way to live.

“Corbett says it could be somebody I don’t know at all,” she said. “Or somebody I’ve known for years.”

Her gaze drifted to the picnic table. The breeze rustled the papers in a file folder that lay open next to a black ball cap.

With an unpleasant shock, she recognized the top page—a copy of one of the stalker’s notes. She knew those hideous notes by heart.

This one said,

I SAW YOU TODAY. YOU WERE WEARING YOUR GREEN PANTSUIT AND BLACK JACKET. IN MY MIND I TOOK OFF YOUR CLOTHES. I WANTED YOU SO MUCH IT WAS LIKE POISON IN MY VEINS. I IMAGINED YOU NAKED AND KNEELING BEFORE ME. THIS IS WHAT YOU DID—

She realized that Hawkshaw had read these filthy notes, and her face blazed with shame. Hastily she rose from the bench.

“I’d better go see about Charlie,” she said. “If he wakes up in a strange room...”

“If he wakes up in a strange room, what?”

“He’ll be upset. Charlie has—a few problems. He has an attention deficiency.”

She nodded, rather bitterly, toward the papers on the table. “Corbett seems to have told you everything else. Didn’t he tell you that?”

“It’s no big deal.”

“Maybe not to you,” she said defensively. “But it makes it harder for him to adjust to change than it is for most children. He doesn’t understand any of this—”

Hawkshaw shrugged one shoulder, as if what she said didn’t matter. “He’ll have breathing space here.”

He obviously didn’t understand, didn’t want to. “Listen,” she said, her voice brittle, “I’m not asking any favors for myself. But you might show a little sympathy for Charlie. He’s only a child, he has special needs, this is a horrible situation.”

“I happen,” he said coolly, “to be rather good with kids.”

I’ll bet, she thought. I’ll just bet.

The breeze tossed Hawkshaw’s hair, flapped the worn cloth of his shorts. He crossed his arms across his chest. He tilted his head in the direction of the stalker’s notes.

“Katherine,” he said, “you think I haven’t seen letters like that before? I have. Plenty of them. You can stop blushing.”

She didn’t want to hear more. She turned and took refuge in the quiet of his strange, disordered house.

CHARLIE’S EYES FLUSTERED open, struggled to focus. Mama leaned over him, smiling. An instant uneasiness swept over him.

These days Mama’s smile was different than it used to be, it no longer seemed real or alive. The smile was like a mask. Charlie could not explain this, he only knew it was true.

“We’re here, Charlie,” Mama said. Her voice was cheerful, but her eyes weren’t. “We’re in Florida. We got here last night. You were asleep—”

Charlie sat up, frowning and rubbing his eyes. She had told him yesterday they had to go to Florida, she had showed him meaningless shapes on a map, she had said a lot of words. Now she was saying them again.

You’re in Florida.

Florida seemed to be a room that was little and not very nice and smelled funny. He didn’t like it. He wanted to go home.

He rubbed his eyes harder, till he saw colored sparks whirl and swoop across his vision. Then he stopped. Warily he opened his eyes again.

Florida was still there, the whole room of it. And the scary thing about Florida was that it was different from all he knew. His bed was not really his bed. The walls were not his walls, the window not his window.

“This house belongs to a man named Mr. Hawkshaw,” Mama said. “Mr. Hawkshaw’s a friend of Mr. Corbett. You remember Mr. Corbett? He drove us to the airport—”

The mask of Mama’s bright smile made Charlie feel something was badly wrong. Her words beat against his ears the way moths beat against a screen at night. Like moths, the words wanted in, but they couldn’t get in.

Charlie stared at the curtains as if hypnotized. They were not his real curtains with the pictures of the Star Wars people on them. These curtains were ugly-brown with blue-and-white fishes on them. The fishes had little blue dots for eyes.

Mama was still talking, her words softly going bat, bat, bat. She had him up, leading him to a bathroom that was not his real bathroom. Her words couldn’t get inside his head. He was too busy looking at all the different things, all the wrong things, all the Florida things, in this bathroom.

The wallpaper was enough to make him dizzy. There were more fishes on it, silly pink-and-yellow fish on a watery green background. He felt as if he were underwater, that Florida had turned him into a fish-boy.

“Hello,” he called in his mind to the other fish. “Hello, I’m a boy who’s trapped here. How do I get back home?”

“Swim, you must swim very hard,” said a pale-yellow fish. “You must swim with all your might. ”

“Charlie, stand still!” Mama ordered. “Just brush your teeth.”

“I’m swimming home,” Charlie said around his toothbrush. His arms made wild windmill motions, as if he were swimming at a heroic pace.

He imagined he was friends with all the fish. He began to sing “Under the Sea.” He imagined himself singing and dancing with all the fish and a big red lobster and pretty little mermaids.

His mother told him to quiet down, but her words were only more moths flying airily around his head. “Under the sea,” he sang and did a fancy fish-dance step. “Under the se-e-a—”

Mama said something about breakfast. She pulled a clean shirt down over his head.

Help! thought Charlie. I can’t see! I can’t breathe! Mama’s a sea witch! She’s put me in a bag!

But he sputtered out of the neck hole of his shirt, safe again. “To the kitchen—” said Mama, opening the door into a hallway. From the first look, he didn’t like this hallway. It was long and narrow and different—it was more of nasty Florida.

But fat old Maybelline was up now, and she wanted out. She waddled down the hallway, her short regs chugging, her ears nearly trailing on the ground.

Charlie the fish-boy swam behind her, his arms churning again. “Glub,” he said. “Glub-glub.” He pretended Maybelline was a squid and that he was following her.

Then he was out of the sea and into a living room, and wow, it wasn’t his living room, it was really different—not all neat like Mama kept their place, and there was stuff everywhere!

He stopped to gape. His mind spun, trying to take it all in as his eyes danced from one object to another. Such a wealth of things! A cascade of things—fishing poles, a net with a handle, a tackle box, an oar, hooks, bobbers, flies, weights, a hundred things that he had no names for.

“Cool!” Charlie breathed. He felt dizzy with wonder. He looked up at a big fish stuffed and mounted on a wall. Was it a shark? It was, it was a shark, he was sure of it—what a paradise of stuff.

“Way cool!”

He reached toward a fishing pole, the biggest fishing pole he’d ever seen. Surely such a pole was used to catch whales!

“Charlie, don’t,” his mother warned, pulling his hand back. “That’s Mr. Hawkshaw’s. Come on. Let’s take Maybelline outside. Then we’ll find some breakfast.”

But Charlie couldn’t help himself. He picked up a colorful fishing lure with all sorts of bright mirror-things glittering on it. It had red plastic tentacles like an octopus—it even had little eyes!

“Charlie!” his mother said sternly.

But the lure was too wonderful, and he was turning it over and over until it bit him—

“Yow!” Charlie sprang back, dropping the lure. A bright drop of blood welled at the tip of his thumb. “I’m stabbed!” he cried. “I been stabbed by an octopus!”

“You should mind your mother, kid,” said a man’s voice.

Something in that voice paralyzed Charlie. A lion-voice , he thought wildly. I hear a lion-voice.

He turned and saw a big, tall man standing in the doorway. This man looked like a superhero to Charlie, except he was dressed strangely. All he wore were shorts and a black baseball cap. His skin was tawny-brown all over, like a lion’s. Charlie stared up at this wondrous being.

“Charlie, now you’ve hurt yourself,” his mother said, but he barely heard her. He was too busy looking at the superhero.

“Let me see your hand,” Mama fussed, but the words fluttered in confusion at his ears. They didn’t really register. He shook off Mama’s questing hand.

“Let’s see, Charlie,” the tall man said, kneeling beside him. He took Charlie by the hand and squinted at the bleeding thumb.

“I was bit by an octopus,” Charlie said, hoping to impress him. “Maybe I’ll die of octopus poison.”

“I doubt it,” said the man. “Come over to the sink. We’ll wash it and put on some antiseptic.”

“It hurts,” Charlie said, “but I’m not crying. See?” He pointed at his tearless eyes.

“I see,” said the tall man, rising to his feet. He was so tall his head seemed to almost touch the ceiling. He kept hold of Charlie’s hand and led him to the cluttered sink.

“Wow,” Charlie breathed, looking up at him. “Maybe I’ll have a big, massive scar.”

“Maybe,” said the man, running cold water on the stinging thumb. “You should have minded your mother.”

Charlie ignored the advice. He also ignored his mother, who stood by with an oddly disapproving look on her face. He would fix her for bringing him to this old Florida. He’d fix her by liking the tall man better than he liked her—so there.

“Who are you?” Charlie asked. “How come you don’t got no shirt?”

“Don’t have any shirt,” his mother corrected, but he hardly noticed.

“My name’s Hawkshaw,” said the man. “I don’t have a shirt because I don’t need one. This is the Florida Keys. It’s warm all year.”

“Then why do you have a hat?” Charlie asked.

“To keep the sun out of my eyes,” said the man, picking up the antiseptic. “Hold still. This is going to hurt.”

“I won’t cry,” Charlie vowed, but the smarting of the medicine made him dance in place.

“Charlie,” his mother asked, “do you need a bandage on your thumb?”

Charlie didn’t answer. He just gazed up, up, up at Hawkshaw. Hawkshaw, it was a good name, he thought. Like Batman. Or Rambo. Or Han Solo.

Hawkshaw’s cap was black with white letters. “What’s your hat say?” he demanded.

“I don’t think he needs a Band-Aid,” Hawkshaw told Mama. To Charlie he said, “It says United States Secret Service.”

Charlie’s eyes widened. “Secret Service? Like the guys who guard the president?”

“Yeah,” Hawkshaw said in the purr-growl of his lion’s voice. “Like that.”

Charlie was swept up by excitement. “Are you in the Secret Service?”

“I was,” Hawkshaw said easily. “What say we take this dog out? She’s standing cross-legged, she has to pee so bad.”

Charlie saw his mother leading the dog outside, but the fact hardly registered. He was too rapt with admiration. “Did you have a gun and everything?”

“A gun and everything,” Hawkshaw said. “Come on. Your mother’s doing all the work.” He headed for the door and Charlie followed as if fastened to him by a string.

“Did you ever guard the president?” Charlie asked in awe.

“Sometimes,” Hawkshaw said. “Mostly I guarded other people.”

“Did you ever shoot anybody?” Charlie asked hopefully. “Did anybody ever shoot you?”

Hawkshaw’s lean face seemed to grow leaner, starker and sterner. “Outside, kid,” he ordered, holding the door.

And Charlie, dutiful as a page in training to a great knight, obeyed.

IN THE YARD, next to a cluster of flowering shrubs, Maybelline squatted modestly. Kate stared off in the opposite direction, trying to seem too dignified to notice.

She saw Hawkshaw come out on the deck. He tilted back the bill of his cap and stared down at her.

Self-conscious, Kate tried to ignore him. She was a mess, of course. She was pale with a Northerner’s pallor, and she hadn’t fastened her hair back, done anything to it except brush it.

Her jeans were baggy, her shirt mannish, and Hawkshaw probably wondered why anyone, least of all a stalker, would want her.

His gaze seemed to settle on the slight thrust of her breasts under the shirt, and, in embarrassment, she looked away. She was imagining things, she told herself. And if she wasn’t, the last thing she needed was anybody’s sexual interest. She’d had enough for a lifetime.

Her son was chattering a mile a minute to the man, and Hawkshaw answered with grunts and nods. But when she stole a glimpse at him, she saw his eyes were still on her.

Maybelline plodded a few steps into the shade and sat down among the deep-red phlox. Delicately, she began to gnaw at her haunch, as if besieging a flea.

Kate knelt beside her, slipping her arm around the dog affectionately. She nuzzled one of the velvety ears. Maybelline kept pursuing the flea.

Kate raised her eyes and stared toward the patch of sea that showed between the trees. The sun beat on her face, and she thought of Charlie, who was as fair-skinned as she. The both of them would need hats and sunscreen, or they’d be burned and blistered.

She turned to look at Charlie again and saw Hawkshaw take off his own cap and adjust it to make it tighter. “Here, kid,” he said, setting it on Charlie’s head. “You want to wear this?”

“Wow,” Charlie breathed, reverently fingering the bill. “You’ll let me?”

“Sure,” said Hawkshaw.

The boy smiled more widely than Kate had seen him smile in weeks. She swallowed.

He was a nice-looking boy, she thought, handsome, even. He had his father’s straight brown hair and angular, masculine features. But his eyes were the same color brown as hers, and in them shone a lively intelligence, a bright imagination.

But sometimes, because of his attention deficit, Charlie’s liveliness was too unfettered; it needed taming.

It seemed profoundly unfair to her that the boy had faced so many problems. The loss of his father, the insanity of her being stalked, his own disability—some—times her feelings of protectiveness for him almost overwhelmed her.

Hawkshaw turned his attention back to Kate. She dropped her gaze to the dog and started to unfasten the leash.

“Wait,” Hawkshaw ordered. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

She looked up, surprise mingled with resentment. His tone had been abrupt, even imperious.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded.

He made his way down the narrow stairs, Charlie tagging behind him like a puppy.

“I just wouldn’t let her off yet,” Hawkshaw said. “The Keys aren’t like the city. Nature gets a little snarky down here.”

“Snarky?” she asked dubiously. It seemed an unlikely word for him to use.

“Dangerous,” he amended. “Come on. Let’s walk her around the yard. I’ll explain what I mean.”

“Look at me, Mama,” Charlie said, fairly dancing before her, adjusting the oversize cap on his head. “I’m a Secret Service man—I guard people.”

He dived on the unsuspecting Maybelline and caught her in a possessive embrace. “You’re a spy!” he informed the startled dog. “I got you!”

Maybelline sighed, martyrlike, and let him wrestle her to the ground. Kate stared down at the boy in shock. “Charlie! Where’s your shirt?”

He had been wearing a shirt only a moment before, she was certain of it. Now his thin, white back was as bare as Hawkshaw’s tanned one.

“Charlie, Charlie,” Kate said, pulling him off the dog. “I asked you—where’s your shirt?”

“I don’t remember,” he said carelessly. He picked up a stick and aimed it into the trees like a gun. “Bang!” he yelled. “Stick ’em up—you’re under arrest!”

Kate knelt before him and pushed the stick down firmly. “Why?” she said, very clearly, very carefully. “Why did you take off your shirt?”

“I don’t have a shirt because I don’t need one,” Charlie said, echoing Hawkshaw exactly. “This is the Florida Keys. It’s warm all year.”

She looked back toward the deck and saw the boy’s polo shirt lying inside out on the bottom stair. He had stripped it off and tossed it aside.

“Charlie,” Kate said firmly, “you have to wear a shirt. You’ll get a sunburn—a bad one.”

“I don’t need one,” the boy repeated stubbornly. “This is Florida.” He adjusted the cap again and looked up at Hawkshaw with shining eyes. “I like Florida better than I did,” he said.

Hawkshaw put his hands on his hips. “Charlie, your mother’s right. Put your shirt back on. Go on. Do it.”

Charlie stood, his face indecisive for a moment. Then he brightened and said, “Okay.” He dashed away and ran back to the stairs. He struggled with his shirt and at last got it on, but inside out.

Kate dropped the dog’s leash, rose to her feet and gave Hawkshaw a sarcastic look. She strode to where Charlie twisted and wriggled. She pulled the shirt off and then expertly put it on him again, right side out.

He jammed the hat back on his head and ran over to Hawkshaw. “I got my shirt on, see?” he said eagerly.

Hawkshaw nodded, keeping his face impassive. “That’s good,” he said. “A boy should mind his mother.”

Kate picked up Maybelline’s leash. She made her voice controlled, almost frosty. “You were going to give us the safety tour, Mr. Hawkshaw?”

“Yes,” Hawkshaw said. “Now the Keys are a special environment. This island we’re on—”

“We’re on an island?” Charlie interrupted, tugging at Hawkshaw’s bare knee. “An island? Where’s the ocean?”

Hawkshaw pointed between the trees. “Over there,” he said.

“I can’t see it,” Charlie almost wailed in disappointment. “Where?”

Hawkshaw hoisted him up easily, so the boy’s head was as high as his own. “Over there. See it?”

“Oh,” Charlie said with disappointment. “I thought it’d be bigger.”

Hawkshaw laughed. “It is bigger. You can’t see much of it from here, that’s all.”

“Can we go closer?” Charlie begged.

“Sure,” Hawkshaw said. “Why not? You better ride on my shoulders. There’s poisonwood between here and there. You’ll have to learn how to identify it, stay away from it.”

“Poisonwood?” Charlie asked, charmed at the exotic and dangerous sound of it.

“Yeah. I’ll show you.” Hawkshaw let the boy settle on his shoulders. He turned to Kate, who stood, holding the dog’s leash and eyeing him warily. “You should come, too,” he said. “You need to learn these things.”

“Then by all means,” she said with a shrug, “let the lesson begin.”

For the first time, he smiled at her, the barest curve at one corner of his lip. He seemed to be saying, You have a problem with this, lady? He moved off through the trees, Charlie on his shoulders.

She felt a strange, primal emotion surge deep within her, a feeling so foreign that at first she didn’t recognize it. And when she recognized it, she was ashamed.

Even when her husband had been alive, Charlie was very much her child. Since Chuck’s death, it had seemed like her and Charlie, the two of them, together against the world. She was used to being the most important person in the boy’s life.

Now, in a matter of moments, he had fallen under the spell of Hawkshaw—Hawkshaw, of all people. And Kate, suddenly relegated to second place in the boy’s regard, was shocked to feel the sting of jealousy.