It was the merest of sounds, but the whisper invaded her sleep. Abruptly awake, Suzanna opened her eyes and concentrated, listening with all her senses, mindful that Richard hated to be touched in his sleep. When the rattle of rain came again against the window, she released her breath and relaxed, secure in the knowledge that she was alone in her house, in sole possession of her bed. A glance at the clock told her it was a few minutes past midnight.
She yawned and stretched, uncurling into the cool expanse of the bed. In a moment she slept again, lulled by the rain outside the open bedroom windows.
Suzanna woke again at dawn to indulge in ten minutes of lazy bliss, listening to the rain and the wind. Rain in this season, at the start of the desert spring, was a welcome event, nothing like the flash floods and lightning that would come later with the heat of an Arizona summer.
She dressed, as usual, at the windows, although her view was hidden by clouds this morning. Even the landscaping in her own backyard was hung with fog. Beyond the swimming pool, past the oleander and juniper hedges, her black gelding provided his own entertainment, charging the rain in his paddock behind the barn. He paced the fence line, head and tail high in response to the snap in the air. Suzanna turned away from the window reluctantly. She did not plan to drive down to the office in Phoenix today, but she had a full day’s work waiting downstairs in her office. The horse would have to work up his own exercise until tomorrow.
By the time she had coffee started in the kitchen, her dog, a German shepherd named Willie, had appeared on the back deck. When the coffee was ready, Suzanna joined him on the deck with her first cup. She walked the length of the deck twice, staying dry under the overhang from the peaked roof forty feet above. The rain was a mild drizzle while the fog curled over the rails and obscured the valley which on clear days stretched unobstructed to the mountains to the west.
The house was high, not only in location, thirty miles out of Phoenix and up where the saguaro and lesser Arizona cactus blended with alpine scrub pine, but high, too in its architecture. The design was starkly modern — three stories of glass and beams with a central wall of rock. Ten years ago, when Richard had shown her the plans, she’d thought it impossibly huge. But she’d grown accustomed to its size, and although the house wasn’t her style, she had learned to love living outside the city.
Now the house meant quiet and solitude, open country with miles of trails off limits to the public and something more. Thanks also to Richard, it had boosted DSL, supporting a telecommuting setup that allowed her to work productively here instead of combating traffic daily to drive to her office in Phoenix.
Today, with fog and clouds obscuring the country in every direction, she could have been on an island for all she could see. Perfect. She gave Willie’s ears a final rub and went in for a jacket. Time to feed the horse — and Willie, too, who took his meals in the tack room to keep the gelding company. Then she’d toast herself a muffin and get to work on the tangle of program code she’d left in the den last night.
The storm began in earnest right after lunch. Each time Suzanna looked up from her keyboard, she took stock of the rain. One moment it was soft and warm, then abruptly brisk and driven by the wind so it streaked the windows beyond her desk.
She resisted its enticement all morning, but early in the afternoon, she realized she was spending more time watching the storm than her terminal. She pushed back her chair and stretched. Time for a break. She scanned through the jumble of printouts. The evaluation left her pleasantly surprised. Just three modules incomplete, and one of those required clarification. She reached for the telephone.
The director who had signed this new report request was always in a hurry but apparently couldn’t be bothered to return phone calls. She waited impatiently after punching in his number. Then she hit the disconnect button and listened again. No dial tone. She sat for a minute, smiling to herself, phone in hand. If the phone lines were down, DSL service would also be out. She couldn’t connect to the data center in Phoenix, couldn’t transmit her files, couldn’t run any tests. So why not enjoy the weather?
Suzanna clicked off the computer and the den lights without another glance at the papers scattered over her desk. Willie jumped up from his post on the deck, where he’d spent the morning watching her through the windows and dozing. She called him softly. His ears flicked in answer. His tail began sweeping back and forth in understanding. He met her at the front door.
She’d intended only a brisk, head-clearing tramp, but once out in the wind and rain, the looming urgency of the morning’s work faded. The storm transformed the familiar trails and each hilltop offered a new opportunity to feel the wind on her face. Her walk extended from fifteen minutes to an hour then to two hours while the project that had absorbed her morning waited, incomplete.
Then abruptly she realized the light had changed, the afternoon was gone. She knew it could not be later than four o’clock, but the low clouds and rain had forced an early dusk.
She should start back, check the phone. Her jeans were damp and she could feel the chill when the wind blew the raincoat open above her high boots. With every step, the wet claimed a little more of her socks where the waterproofing had worn thin over the arches of the old boots. She wiggled her toes absently as she walked. She was working up to a hot bath and tea in front of the fireplace, but there was no rush. The storm was intoxicating and the reports weren’t due until Monday. She could finish them over the weekend.
She stopped at the top of a rise to call the dog. A sudden gust plastered her drenched hair against her face. She swept it back impatiently, using both hands to hold it out of her eyes, while scanning the tall grass and shrubs for Willie. Spotting him nose down behind her, she clapped her hands to summon him. Once she had his attention, she dropped to one knee, the signal for a game they had played since he was a puppy.
The big shepherd responded instantly. The black plume of his tail came up and he skimmed the matted clumps of grass, racing straight at her, before swerving at the last second. She felt the spray from the stiff guard hairs of his coat across her cheek. Still kneeling, she rotated to face him. Back he came, down the trail from the other direction while she remained motionless. The game always built her confidence in the athletic dog’s split-second timing and perfect balance. The velocity he achieved with each pass added to the fun. At last, she lost her balance and fell laughing into the drenched grass. Willie came loping back, panting and pleased with himself.
As she rose, a flash of white against the rain-black vegetation caught and held her attention. Staring, she took a half step toward it, and Willie’s instant-on radar picked up her focus. The dog was past her before she realized what she was looking at. Then she knew it was a person, although some distance away and lying down. A man, on his back, face up to the rain. She watched as Willie approached him, unsure whether to call the dog back or call out to the man.
The flutter of white that had caught her attention was not a wind-blown scrap of paper as she’d first suspected, but his shirt being revealed in snatches by gusts of wind. His dark suit and the nest of soggy grass made him almost invisible. He was well off the trail. Had she kept to it, she would never have noticed him. Only the white of his shirt when the wind whipped his jacket open revealed him now.
Suzanna edged toward him, looking for signs of life. His eyes were closed, his face gray under the stubble of his beard. She didn’t recognize him. His hair was light colored and very short, too short to reveal if it was blond or gray. Not gray she decided when she was directly above him, not old enough. Even lying unconscious in the rain, he radiated life, his posture at odds with the strong lines of his face. Her sense of his vitality grew despite his absolute stillness under the drenching onslaught.
After a moment’s indecision, she knelt and pressed two fingers against his neck, under his jaw. His skin, above the shirt and jacket collar, was ice cold and she almost jerked her hand away. She was aware of the chill of her own skin as she waited for a pulse. In a few seconds, she realized that she was feeling her own heartbeat through her clammy fingertips. Abandoning her search for his pulse, she slid her fingers around to the back of his neck and probed gingerly under his collar. And there, unmistakably, she felt body heat.
Satisfied, her hand tingling, she sat back. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with velvet lapels that were now as soft as suede from the rain. The lapels were cold too, she discovered when she lifted them, first the left side that the wind was catching, and saw again the clean white pleats of his shirt. Then she lifted the sodden right side, where the shirt pleats were not white but lumpy and dark. Blood saturated that side of his jacket and discolored the entire side of the shirt down to the waistband of his trousers and back under his arm. She exhaled and gently closed the jacket. No wonder he was so cold.
While she knelt, Willie had remained at her side. His nose twitched when she opened the jacket. The man shuddered when the dog’s inquiring nose reached his face. His eyes opened. His left hand and arm swung stiffly away from his body, revealing a handgun. Suzanna hauled Willie back, then she caught the stranger’s arm with both hands. “Don’t,” she said sharply. “He won’t hurt you.”
If he heard, he gave no sign, and despite her grip on his sleeve, his arm continued to swing out in an arc away from his body. His eyes were open now and focused on the dog, only inches away.
“Wait!” Suzanna jerked again on his arm but lost her grip when he snapped his arm out and up to point the gun. Suddenly, she was frightened and struggling to breathe. Why had she touched him? She spun away, slipped in the wet grass, and fell hard against him. The impact made him grunt, an involuntary sound that was cut off abruptly.
Suzanna scrambled up and ran, calling out for Willie. In a few strides, she forced herself to stop and risk a look over her shoulder. He lay motionless, his arm with the gun hidden by vegetation. She looked back the way she had come, along the base of a small dam and down the trail.
She’d been out for hours and hadn’t seen anyone else. The trail wound through a thousand acres of private recreation park. The terrain was pine and upland desert shrubs interspersed with meadows of bunchgrass and granite. At one time it had all been open cattle range, but now the land was a private preserve for homeowners and members of the Águila Arroyo Country Club, her home. She knew it well. This afternoon the comforting house lights of her neighbors were blocked, in one direction by the rise of the dam and by the mist in the other.
She could feel the wind through the wet at her knees and her toes were soaked and cold now. Willie pranced toward home, whining for her attention. Suzanna took a deep breath and gestured to the dog. He sank down reluctantly in the middle of the trail.
She retraced her steps to the stranger and bent awkwardly to pull the gun out of his hand, trying to keep her distance and stay on her feet in case he wanted to wave the gun around some more. She was relieved when he made no response, apparently unconscious again. His hand was gritty with sand, ice cold and clenched around the gun. She tackled the fingers gently at first, watchful for a reaction. When he remained immobile, she braced herself on her knees and pried them away one by one.
The gun was a semi-automatic. Prompted by an old memory, Suzanna examined it and found the magazine release. She dropped the clip into her raincoat pocket, then opened the slide and was shocked when a cartridge ejected. The motions were part of an old, half-forgotten habit, actions she had been taught and had practiced. Her father’s drills always started with handing her an unloaded handgun and reminding her to confirm the condition of the weapon as her first action. She felt through the grass for the bullet and pushed it and the gun into the opposite pocket.
She gathered up her wind-blown hair and, still kneeling, looked carefully around the clearing. There had to be someone or something here, some explanation for his presence. The park was private and this man certainly did not belong. She knew her neighbors. They didn’t carry guns, or wander around in tuxedos in the rain.
Cautiously this time, she hunched over his face to shield it from the rain and wind. “Hey,” she said, “can you hear me?” Nothing. Closer then, with her face inches from his, she tried again. “Listen, I think you need some help.” She felt faintly ridiculous while she waited for him to respond. When he gave no indication of having heard, she watched his face for a moment and then went on in a firmer voice: “What happened to you? I think you need a doctor. I’m going to call 911 and they’ll get you out of here … with the police helicopter if necessary.”
His eyes opened. He looked at the sky, not at her. “No need,” he said clearly. “No 911, no doctor.”
Surprised, she sat back. The rain was steady and without her sheltering him, it drenched his face. Perhaps because it was his only possible action, he closed his eyes again. She studied him. Why no doctor? And if he could speak, why act like he was dead?
“You need a doctor,” she said firmly. “You’re bleeding and you’re in shock or something. I’m going for help. I’ll be as quick as I can but you need to stay here. Don’t move, okay?”
No response. With a tickle of intuition, she tried mentioning the police again. “The sheriff can get the helicopter in here. That’s what it’s for.”
He looked at her. Then his gaze slid past her shoulder to fasten on the dog. His lips barely moved. She thought he’d said Alsatian, but couldn’t be sure as the wind began to roar with a fresh burst of rain. His attention left the dog and settled on her. His eyes were light-colored, unworried and unfriendly. She sat back.
His voice was a low rasp but perfectly controlled, reasonable, almost reassuring. “I don’t need your help,” he said. “I’ll be gone soon. Go home and don’t make any calls. Just go and forget about me. I’ll be gone before you get home.” There was no trace of worry or excitement in his voice. His words were obviously a dismissal, an order.
Suzanna knew he did not mean “dead” when he said “gone.” He was saying he would get up and leave in a minute, when he was ready, that it was none of her business. She was a nuisance. Maybe somebody was already helping him. She considered that possibility while he watched her. The situation felt different now with his full attention on her.
She did want to go, to get away. Her knees were cold and wet from kneeling and the wind was blowing rain down her neck. He seemed very much alive now, and she tried to reconcile this with his previous unresponsiveness. Faced with the bleakness of his expression, she wondered if she had imagined the blood under his jacket. Clearly, he wanted her gone.
Reluctant but undecided, she waited. He returned her stare coldly for a short eternity of seconds, during which she determined to leave him, go home, find help. She shifted her weight and as if that small action had broken his control, he shuddered and began to gag. Groaning, he rolled awkwardly onto his left side and retched repeatedly and convulsively into the grass.
Suzanna watched his shoulders heaving again and again, feeling her own stomach contract. Finally she lifted his face clear of the grass and supported him while the terrible gagging continued. At last, the spasms stopped, and his body relaxed.
The respite was short-lived. Almost immediately he began to shiver. Soon he was shaking so violently she couldn’t prevent him from rolling back into the grass. Uncertain but desperate to relieve the cramps in her legs, hoping to ease his convulsions, she reached out a steadying hand for his hunched shoulder. At the first hint of pressure, he cried out and arched away from her. He lay on his back again, breathing through his teeth and shuddering with chills. This time, when she leaned over him, he knocked her roughly back with his left arm and hissed through his clenched teeth, “Christ! Would you fuck off!”
His words and the force of his arm broke the spell. Suzanna pushed herself upright and stumbled back to the trail. Willie came to her and thrust his nose into her hand. She stroked him reassuringly while circulation returned to her tingling legs. The afternoon light was fading. It would be full dark soon. Already, she could barely pick out the dam and the sandy trail along its base. When she turned her attention to the man’s place of concealment, he was barely visible.
She had run this trail many times. It was a mile of steady uphill from here to her house, an unlikely possibility for him. Or was it? She rubbed her shoulder where his arm had caught her. He had quick, strong reflexes and he could certainly speak plainly. He’d also been armed, as the weight of his gun in her pocket reminded her. Maybe he was tough enough to help himself, whoever he was.
He was in trouble but he didn’t want help. Had he resources of his own? And if so, where were they? She remembered her father’s distaste for the idea of the public attempting to intervene in police business. If this man was a cop, or military, that would fit with his haircut and the gun but the tuxedo suggested something completely different.
But did it matter who he was? Time for that later. His condition would only deteriorate while she speculated. She’d better leave him — at least long enough to run home and call for help despite his refusal. Oh damn … the phones … probably out of service for the duration of the storm.
If she left now and ran home, it would take half an hour in boots and raincoat. Then, whether she got through on the phone or not, she could come back but with what? A waterproof blanket? She might have one of those, but she didn’t have a tent. In the remote possibility that the phone was working and she made the call, it’d still take another hour for the ambulance. Even then, an ambulance couldn’t get close; they’d have to come on foot. She’d have to leave him again to meet the EMTs at the road and guide them. The alternative was to start knocking on doors, searching for a neighbor home from work early on a Friday. The helicopter wasn’t a real possibility; she knew the fog ruled that out.
So how long before he got any help? Two hours, probably longer. Meanwhile, he was freezing, in shock, and possibly bleeding to death. Surely, she could do better herself.
Back at his side she discovered she could no longer see him clearly. She inched her hand toward the pale blur of his face. When her fingertips found his collar, she opened her hand against the cold bristle of his jaw. He moved against her palm. Unsure of the slight motion she leaned closer. He said something that the wind snatched away, then reverted to stillness.
For another minute, she waited. Then she straightened. “All right,” she said firmly, “I think you’d better get up now.”
He groaned but made no attempt to rise.
“Listen, wouldn’t you like to go someplace warm?”
“Where?” His voice crackled with suspicion.
“Get up,” she said, “and I’ll tell you about it.”