“I’m coming!” Lacey called as she jumped off the porch and raced toward the kennel, sand flying behind her. Sasha was far ahead of her, barking and growling himself. Lacey waved her arms in the air. “Get off her! Get off her!” she screamed. She could see blood on Mackenzie’s leg, blood on the sand. God, please let her be all right!
She reached the kennel and pounded her fists against the fence. “Get away from her!” But the dog might have been deaf for all the attention he paid her. Lacey watched him take a mouthful of Mackenzie’s long hair and lift her head a few inches from the ground, dragging her over the sand while the girl tried to beat him away with her fists. He was going to kill her, Lacey thought, but she wasn’t going to let that happen.
She pulled open the wire door of the enclosure and ran inside, heading toward the opposite end of the kennel, knowing that Wolf would turn on her in a heartbeat. Sasha followed her in, but gentle dog that he was, he only stood by helplessly, barking in distress. Sure enough Wolf let go of Mackenzie’s hair and turned to glare at Lacey, his lips curled up, every inch of his body letting her know that she was his next victim. “Get out, Mackenzie!” she called as the girl struggled to her knees. “Get out!”
Blood dripping down her leg, Mackenzie half hobbled, half crawled, toward the exit. Mackenzie forgotten, Wolf ran toward Lacey, his teeth huge, sharp daggers in his mouth, and although she raised her arms high above her head, trying to appear to be bigger than she was, and although she shouted and screamed in an attempt to frighten him away from her, he didn’t hesitate. She pressed her back against the chain-link fence and watched him open his jaws wide as he dived for her thigh. Excruciating pain shot through her leg as the dog dug his teeth deep into her muscle and dragged her to the ground, and her only prayer was that someone would arrive soon to help Mackenzie, because she would not be able to do it herself. She was going to die.
CHAPTER 42
Someone was holding her hand. Whispering her name. Lacey struggled to lift her eyelids, then quickly let them fall shut again. The light in the room was too bright.
“That’s it, Lacey,” a male voice said. “Come on out of it.”
She forced her eyes open and saw Tom, his wiry blond ponytail hanging over his shoulder, his face close to hers, and she thought she must be lying on the floor of the studio she shared with him.
He smiled. “You’re back, sugar,” he said. There were tears in his eyes. She felt his hand on her head, smoothing her hair.
Then she remembered Wolf’s mouth coming at her. She couldn’t see the dog’s face at all; he was one gigantic cavern filled with teeth, and the memory made her wince. She heard a whimper and it took her a few seconds to realize that she was the person producing it.
“Is this…studio?” she whispered to Tom.
“The studio? Oh, no, baby. No.” He smoothed his big rough hand over her temple and onto her hair again. She’d known Tom was her father for more than a decade, but she had never felt his fatherliness more than at that moment, when he was stroking her hair and blinking back tears. “You’re in the hospital, honey,” he said. “That dog gave you a couple of bites.”
It had been more than a couple, she was certain of that. Her body ached and burned. It felt as though someone was twisting a vise around her limbs tight enough to break the skin. “Pain,” she whispered.
He nodded. “I’ll call the nurse.” He started to stand up, but she reached out to grab him, catching the shoulder of his T-shirt in her right hand.
“Don’t go,” she said, frightened. Her head was so foggy. If he left, she was afraid she would slip back into the strange dark world from which she’d just emerged.
“Okay,” he said, sitting down again.
She remembered Mackenzie, remembered the blood on the sand.
“Mackenzie?” she asked. She felt unable to produce more than one or two words at a time.
“You saved her life.” Tom grinned. “Baby, you were so brave. I always knew you were a remarkable kid, but I didn’t know you had that in you. I couldn’t have done it.”
Not even for me? she wanted to ask him, but it was too many words, and she knew the answer, anyway. He would have done it. He would do anything for her.
“There was blood…sand.” She struggled to get the words out, to make her mind and her mouth work together. “Mackenzie.”
“She got a good bite on her leg,” Tom said, “and a few bruises. But she didn’t even have to spend the night in the hospital.”
“Do I?” she asked, and he grinned at her again.
“You’ve already been here a couple of days, sugar,” he said. “We’ve all been taking turns sitting with you—Alec and Olivia and Gina and Clay and Bobby—and I’m the lucky one who gets to be here when you wake up.”
“Couple days?” she asked. How had she lost a couple of days?
“They think you must have hit your head on a corner of the doghouse or something,” Tom said. “Knocked yourself out. Which maybe was for the best, Lacey, so you didn’t have to know what that frigging dog was doing to you.”
That explained the knifelike pain in the back of her head.
“He didn’t kill me,” she said, amazed and a little euphoric.
“He would have if Bobby hadn’t gotten home when he did,” Tom said.
“How many bites…really?” she asked.
Tom looked hesitant, then obviously decided on the truth. “Nine,” he said. “Nine really good ones, and a few less serious.”
“My legs?” Her legs were on fire, and Tom nodded.
“Your legs. Your butt. Your left arm. But your beautiful face is just fine.”
“Put the dog down?” she asked.
“It’s already been done,” Tom said bluntly. “They did an autopsy. The dog had some…I don’t know…some kind of epilepsy or something. Your dad’s kicking himself for not pulling strings to get him that neurological exam sooner. They might have been able to help him, then.”
She shut her eyes at that news. “Poor dog,” she said.
“You know what?” It was clear that Tom wanted to change the subject.
She looked at him, too tired to ask “What?”
“I think Bobby has a thing for you,” he said. “A big thing. He’s practically been living here since they brought you in.”
She tried to smile, but was not sure she succeeded.
“Is it mutual?” Tom asked.
“I’m…” She licked her lips. They were very dry. “I’m fighting it,” she said.
“Why, sugar?”
“Lot of reasons,” she said. She wanted to tell him about Bobby handing a wad of bills to the skinny blonde in the parking lot, but knew she could not possibly string all those words together.
“Hey.” The voice came from somewhere else in the room, and Lacey turned her head to see her father standing in the doorway, a smile on his face.
“Hey, Alec,” Tom said, standing up and taking a few steps away from the bed to make room for the man who was, in all ways but one, her father.
Her father leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I am so glad to see you awake,” he said. “You had all of us pretty shaken up.”
Tom rested his hand on Alec’s shoulder. “I’ll take off now,” he said, and Lacey was quite certain he didn’t want to go, but felt he needed to give her some time alone with her father.
“I’m glad you were here,” her father said to Tom, and the two men shook hands.
“Bye, Tom,” she said, touched by the careful cordiality between the two of them. She knew how hard the last decade had been for them both, how they had each struggled with their own demons, doing their best not to put her in the middle. And she knew that each man’s love for her mother had been pure, even if Annie’s love for them had been tainted by her lies.
Her father didn’t immediately sit down in the chair Tom had vacated. Instead, he lifted the covers from her legs and checked her bandages, then did the same to her left arm. She shut her eyes, not yet ready to see her b
ody.
“You’re going to have some scars, honey, but the docs don’t think you’ll loose any functioning, and that’s great news. You were very lucky. The one bite came too close for comfort to your femoral artery. Speaking of which, how’s the pain?”
“Sucks,” she said, and he smiled.
He touched the bag hanging on the pole next to her bed, studying whatever it said on the label. “I’ll go talk to the nurse and see what she can do for you,” he said.
“Not yet.” She was afraid the drugs would knock her out, and she wasn’t yet ready to slip away again. If she was in pain, at least she knew she was alive.
“Tom said you put Wolf down,” she said.
Alec shook his head, finally sitting down in the chair next to her bed. “I didn’t have to,” he said. “Bobby took care of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tom didn’t tell you?”
She struggled to remember the conversation with Tom, but it was already muddy in her mind. “Tell me what?” she asked.
“Bobby pulled into the Kiss River parking lot while Wolf was attacking you,” her father said. “He ran into the kennel, grabbed the dog by the collar, lifted him up, and threw him against the doghouse. The dog’s neck was broken. He died instantly.”
“Oh, my God.” Lacey covered her mouth with her hand. “I’d be dead if he didn’t get there when he did.”
“I don’t want to think about it,” her father said, “but I admit I’m pretty grateful to him. You’re the local hero, though. You saved Mackenzie’s life, running into the kennel like you did. There’s no doubt about that.”
“It’s the kind of thing Mom would have done, huh,” she said.
He leaned away from the bed, folding his arms across his chest. “Your Mom wasn’t either all good or all evil, Lacey,” he said. “You’ve tried to get rid of her good qualities along with the bad. Ever since the day she died, you’ve scrutinized every move you made to see how it compared to what your mother would have done. First, you tried to be Saint Lacey. Then when you found out about…her indiscretions, you tried to be as unlike her as you could be.”
“I know,” she whispered.
Her father leaned forward, his faded blue eyes filled with love for her. “This is your second chance, Lace,” he said. “Forget about what your mother would or wouldn’t have done in a given situation. All anyone wants from you is to just be Lacey.”
CHAPTER 43
The drugs had her floating in and out of consciousness, and the in-between stage was filled with nightmare images of Wolf and a variety of nonsensical hallucinations. Late that night, when the lights were low in her hospital room and the pain had shifted from viselike to a grueling, fiery ache, she thought she saw a nun sitting in the chair next to her bed. Through her half-opened eyes, she could see white and black cloth, wavy and out of focus.
“Hello, beautiful.”
She knew the voice, and it did not belong to a nun.
“Bobby?”
“You recognized me even in these duds?” he asked with a laugh.
Opening her eyes wider and struggling to clear her head, she saw that he was wearing a tuxedo. Black tie, red cummerbund.
“What are you—” She tried to raise her head, but winced at the pain. “Where are you going? Why are you dressed up?”
“I rented it,” he said. “Do you know how hard it is to rent a tux in the Outer Banks in August?”
She wondered if she was hallucinating the entire conversation. “I don’t get it,” she said.
“I wanted to see if you’d like me any better if I looked straight-arrow. You know, if I lose the bad boy image.” He turned his head to the side and pointed to his earlobe. “See?” he said. “I even took my earring out.”
She laughed, her first laugh all day, and it hurt all the way to her toes. “Can you…you know…” She made a circling motion with her hand, but could not think of the word. “Could you wind up my bed so I can see you better?”
He moved to the end of her bed and turned the crank until she was nearly in a sitting position. He looked at her. “You okay?”
“Now turn on the light,” she said, shifting a bit on the bed. Sitting up made her very aware that Wolf had made mincemeat of her buttocks. “It’s too dark in here,” she added. “I thought you were a nun.”
He laughed as he turned on the light, then he stood next to the bed so she could get a good look at him. His hands were on his hips, the cockeyed grin on his face. He was gorgeous in his jeans and tattoo and earring, and he was just as gorgeous now. She smiled. “You could wear a wedding gown and you’d still look like a bad boy,” she said.
“Well, that’s a repellent image,” he said. “Are you saying I went to all this trouble for nothing?”
“It was sweet of you,” she said.
His expression sobered. “How’re you feeling, Lace?” he asked.
She hesitated, trying to find both a comfortable position on the bed as well as the words she needed to say what she was thinking.
“Something’s bothering me,” she said.
“Want me to get the nurse?”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” She looked him squarely in the eye. “I saw you with that woman a few times,” she said, “and I…I just need to know…you gave her…” She winced as a fresh wave of pain coursed through her head.
He sat down in the chair next to her bed. “I think your pain meds might be doing something to your brain,” he said.
“Please don’t do that,” she pleaded. “Don’t pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Lacey…help me out, okay? What did you see me give her?”
“Shh!” she whispered. He was talking too loud, his voice a jackhammer in her head.
“Babe.” He rested his palm against her forehead. “I told you. That woman is just a friend.”
“What’s her name?”
She saw the hesitancy in his face as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He had a five-o’clock shadow, and she could see the red veins in his eyes and knew that he had had a rough couple of days himself.
“I…” he began, then stopped. “I’ll tell you, Lace. It’s only fair that I do, but you have to keep this between us, all right?”
She said nothing, hoping he was not going to hand her another cock-and-bull story.
“Her name is Elise,” he said. “She’s my cousin.”
“Your cousin?”
He nodded. “Years ago, I got her hooked on crack and booze,” he continued. “She discovered heroin all on her own. She started turning tricks to feed her habit. She got in with some bad people—some really bad people. I was helping her get clean, but her pimp and her dealers were after her and they were not small-time players. She was in serious danger. So I hid her with some friends, because I knew my house would be one of the first places they looked for her. When you called and I decided to come here, it seemed perfect. She had old friends here, in Kitty Hawk. So she’s been staying with them, but I have to keep in close touch with her because she’s still…fragile. She could slip any minute. Worse, those guys could find her. I don’t know what they’d do to her if they did.”
She wasn’t sure if the relief she felt was from his explanation or from the drugs, but for the second time that day, that odd sense of euphoria came over her.
“Do you believe me?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes,” she said, and she meant it.
He lowered the metal railing on the side of her bed and took her hand, holding it in both of his. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared or as furious as I was when I saw that dog tearing into you,” he said. “You weren’t moving. I thought you were dead, Lace.”
“Dad told me you killed the dog,” she said.
“I did, and I have no regrets about it,” he said. “Does that bother you?”
Under other circumstances, it would have bothered her a great deal. But not this dog. Not now. “No,” she said.
>
“Mackenzie needs to see you,” he said. “She’s pretty sore, still, and I persuaded her to wait until tomorrow, but she’s terrified you might die, and no matter how many times I tell her you’re going to be all right, she doesn’t believe it.”
“Oh.” Lacey frowned, knowing how empty those words must sound to Mackenzie. “People told her that her mother was going to be all right, too,” she said.
Bobby pressed her hand between his. “Do you remember,” he said, “when I first got here, you and I had a talk about relationships, and you said that you had a romantic notion that you could find someone you’d love so much you’d lay down your life for that person?”
She nodded.
“I was thinking about that the past few days.” He smiled. “I’m willing to bet you never expected that someone to come in the form of a child.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “No,” she said. “I didn’t.”
He stood up and leaned over to kiss her forehead. “Get some sleep, babe,” he said. He moved to the end of the bed to crank the mattress flat again. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
He walked toward the door, in his tuxedo and his shiny black shoes, and the whole getup touched someplace deep in her heart.
“Bobby?” she said softly.
He turned around to look at her.
“I would have done the same for you,” she said.
Sometime the next day, the tall, slender blond woman herself appeared in Lacey’s hospital room. She sat down in the chair next to the bed, and for a groggy moment, Lacey thought she was a vision.
“I’m Elise,” the woman said. “I’m sorry you got so chewed up by that dog.”
This close, Lacey could see the woman’s hollow-eyed look. Her hair was bleached and frayed, like the bristles of a broom. Her tank top fell too low, and her ribs were clearly visible beneath the skin of her chest.
“Thank you.” Lacey was not certain what else to say. The pain was even worse than it had been the day before.