She let the hospital door fall shut behind her and started running toward the moon. She’d been watching it from her office window for the past hour, watching it lift into a black winter sky, and finally she could stand it no longer. She set her work on the corner of her desk where it would wait for her until morning, changed into her running clothes, dropped her work clothes off with Janni, and escaped.
A few flakes of snow fluttered in the air around her head as her footsteps fell into a steady rhythm on the sidewalk. She turned onto the main road and frowned at the bumper-to-bumper traffic and mounds of dirty snow piled in the gutter. She couldn’t run on a street choked with cars on such a beautiful night. No, tonight she’d run home on the beach, next to the water.
She reached the beach by Jenkinson’s Pier and ran for a while on the boardwalk, the rides surrounding her like huge, haunting monsters. At the end of the boardwalk she dropped down to the snow-covered sand, then ran out to the water’s edge, where the sand was packed and ice-hard. It was eerily quiet. Most of the houses were deserted, boards on their windows, and the splintering sound of the sea was all she heard as the miles fell behind her.
The lights of the Chapel House were in view when she noticed someone on the beach. A huddled figure, sitting near the water.
Who would be out here, sitting alone on the beach on a January night? Some degenerate, probably, warming himself with a bottle of whiskey nestled in a paper bag at his side. Kit slowed her pace, wondering if she should cut back up to the road to avoid an encounter with whoever this might be.
But it was more likely someone like herself, lured to the beach by the moon. She picked up her pace again.
It was a girl. A child? No, a little older than that. Thirteen, fourteen at the most. She was the only patch of color on the beach. Long, pale brown hair, gray pants, and a red sweater. Just a sweater? Kit herself wore a heavy warm-up jacket.
She slowed to a stop and smiled at the girl. “Hi,” she said. The sweater was thin, dotted with snowflakes. “Aren’t you cold? It’s no more than thirty degrees out here.”
The girl looked up, her huge eyes shining in the moonlight. Something was wrong with her. Drugs maybe? No, she didn’t look the type.
“Are you all right?” Kit asked.
The girl shook her head, and Kit saw that she was holding a blood-stained tissue to her chin. Her left cheek was swollen and bruised.
Kit dropped to her knees. “Someone’s hurt you.”
The girl looked down at the sand. “Two men,” she whispered between chattering teeth. Her lips were blue.
Kit took off her warm-up jacket and wrapped it around the girl’s shoulders. “Where? Who?”
The girl shut her eyes.
“Do you live nearby?”
She shook her head.
“Where do you live?”
She hesitated a second before answering. “A few towns over.”
“What are you doing out here? Did you know the men who hurt you?”
The girl stared at her sneakers, at the toe where the threads were threatening to pull apart and let in the winter air.
She’s frightened by the questions, Kit thought. Trying to fabricate answers in a mind not used to lying. What this kid needed right now was help; the interrogation could wait. “Never mind,” she said. “Let me take you to my house. We can get you washed up and call the police from—”
“No, no, no!” The girl shook her head furiously, her hair whipping the air. “They said they’d kill me if I told anyone what happened.”
Kit nodded. “I won’t let them hurt you.” She made the promise as though she knew how to keep it. “Tell me your name.”
“Rennie.”
“Well, look, Rennie. Let’s go to my house and at least get you cleaned up. Let me see your chin.”
Rennie held the tissue away from her face, and Kit could see that the wound was wide, the skin ragged along its edges. It would probably need some stitches. “Keep pressing the tissue against it while we walk,” she said. She stood up but Rennie didn’t move.
“I don’t think I can walk. My chest hurts when I move. Across here.” She set her hands on her red sweater, along the bottom of her rib cage.
“Did they hit you there?”
Rennie shook her head. “They threw me against that wall.” She pointed toward the house behind them, boarded up for the winter. A long concrete wall ran the length of the patio. Kit winced. This girl was probably lucky to be alive.
Then she noticed the dark stain in the crotch of Rennie’s pants.
“Are you bleeding?” she asked.
Rennie looked at her in confusion and pointed to her chin with her free hand.
“No, honey, not there. Tell me, did they rape you?”
The girl began to cry. There was no sound, just rivers of tears flowing down her cheeks. “I can’t go home,” she said “I can’t.”
“It’s all right. We’ll get you to the hospital, get you fixed up—”
“No!”
“You have no choice. You’re hurt. The hospital will be legally bound to call the police, but you don’t have to press charges.” She was talking rapidly now, her heart pounding in her chest. What if the girl was hemorrhaging? She had to get her to Blair quickly. “Stay here. Don’t move.”
She turned and ran toward the Chapel House, glancing behind her to see the girl hunched over her knees again, staring out to sea.
She called the ambulance and then Cole.
“Aren’t you on call for the Emergency Room this week?” she asked.
“Uh-huh. Why?”
“I found a girl on the beach who I’m pretty sure has been raped. I called an ambulance to bring her over. Can you meet us in the ER?”
“The ER can handle it without me. Unless she’s really messed up.”
“I think she may be.”
She heard him sigh. It was six-thirty and certainly he wanted to get home, but she didn’t have time to sympathize. “Do you know if Janni’s still there?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Could you look out your window and see if her car’s there?”
The sigh again. She heard his chair creak as he leaned back to look out the window toward the parking lot.
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Call her please, Cole. This kid’s going to need a social worker.”
If Kit had any doubts about Rennie’s story, they disappeared as she watched her being lifted into the ambulance. Lines of pain creased Rennie’s face. On the ride to Blair, she squeezed Kit’s fingers in her hand each time the ambulance took a turn or hit a dip in the road.
“Don’t let them send me home,” she begged.
Kit leaned down to give the girl a hug. Rennie nestled in her arms as though a loving touch was so rare that she would take it from a stranger.