Roan Read Free Page B

packages, applied a fresh compress, and then wrapped it with a wide strip of elastic bandaging to hold it in place. Her grasp on consciousness loosened, ebbing and flowing like the waves on the beach at Sanibel Island, her favorite place in the world. Sometimes, when she felt most attuned to the sea, she lay with her feet in the surf, waiting for the tide to come in. Gradually, the waves reached higher and higher until they broke over her head, submerging her. She felt that possibility now, as if a dark tide were rolling toward her. If she let go, didn’t fight it, she thought she might be taken out to sea.
    Her lashes flickered down, remained close. Distantly, shefelt the sheriff wiping the blood from her skin, taking care not to touch the wound. The pungent smell of alcohol hovered on the air, then began to fade.
    â€œSherry? Where’s that ambulance?” The voice of the man who knelt over her carried a new hardness.
    â€œSorry, Sheriff,” the dispatcher answered promptly, as if she also noted the difference. “I’ll patch them through so the driver can give you an ETA.”
    Silence descended, broken only by the low hum of the night creatures and the rustle of paper and plastic as the sheriff gathered up bandaging trash. Then the radio sputtered again as the driver came on to say he was five minutes away.
    Tory heard the sheriff rise, then crunch across the gravel to the patrol car. The blue-and-white strobe lights flared into the night with blinding intensity even behind her closed eyelids. He had turned on his flashers to help the ambulance locate them.
    The sheriff didn’t return. Tory grew aware of a vague sense of having been abandoned. She tried to ignore it, told herself that she was lightheaded from all that had happened, that the man wasn’t her anchor or her guardian angel, far from it. He’d done his duty toward her, and that was all she had any right to expect. Anyway, she didn’t know him, didn’t need him, and certainly didn’t care if he went away and left her to die alone.
    It didn’t help.
    Alone, she was always alone, she thought with a shiver. No real friends or close family, no one who understood or cared who she was inside. It had been this way for as long as she could remember; she should be used to it by now. She had learned to hide her fears, to pretend to be harder and more sophisticated than she really was, to use invented personalities like the playgirl, the socialite, the princess asmasks to hide her insecurities. She’d become so adept at it that she sometimes wondered herself what the real Victoria Molina-Vandergraff was like.
    The sheriff was coming back after all; she could hear his footsteps. Hurriedly, she wiped at the wetness under her eyes then lowered her trembling hand to her side. The sheriff of Turn-Coupe seemed to notice things that others might miss, she thought, and felt a shiver crawl up her spine at the idea.
    â€œAre you cold?”
    He hunkered down beside her again and reached to smooth his fingertips along the goose bumps that beaded her bare forearm. That touch triggered a fresh shudder that seemed to have no end.
    â€œNo,” she whispered. “Yes…I don’t know. The night is warm, but I feel so…so cold inside.”
    â€œShock from trauma,” he said softly, almost to himself. He turned to stare down the road with his head cocked to one side, as if listening for the ambulance. As the seconds passed with no sign, he breathed a soft imprecation and swung back to her.
    He eased to the ground beside her with care, lying along her injured left side. Rolling her gently away from him, he slid his arm under her head and nestled her back against his chest. He circled her waist, then drew her closer, so she was tucked into his body from her shoulder blades to her ankles.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” she whispered.
    His warm breath brushed her cheek as he answered. “Sorry. It’s the