Jill Elizabeth - Shake Down

Janice collected her flashlight and hooked it to her belt loop. Then she struggled to her knees, and from there, to her feet. One knee stung, but at least no other body part seemed to have suffered more than minor abrasions and bruises. Biting her lower lip between her teeth, she cautiously started up the steep stairs. The third from the bottom step had given way where it would have been fastened to the side panels. Those creaky nail sounds took on new significance.

With a soft moan, she lifted her leg high over the missing step and finally managed to emerge onto the main floor hallway. As much as she would have liked to slide down the wall, huddle on the dusty floor and indulge in a good cry, she forced herself to head up the passage.

Her rental car sat in the weed-infested gravel parking area beside the cottage. The drive from here to the hospital, shaken and hurting, didn’t appeal to her, but neither did calling for an ambulance—if cell service even existed out here.

She rounded the corner into the main room, empty of furnishings like the rest of the cottage. Movement outside the mullioned picture window stopped her in her tracks. Her jaw gaped as oxygen vacated her lungs.

Someone stood on the porch, face framed in a rectangular pane. In the shade of the porch roof, she couldn’t make out features, but the dark craters that must be eyes fixed her with molten intensity. She’d never been one to sense emotion from people the way her psychologist friend Laurel did, but the sheer malice of the glare wrapped Janice in a sheet of ice. So this is what people meant when they said their blood ran cold.

“Who—who’s there?” She forced the words past rigid lips.

The porch boards moaned as the figure tromped away. By an act of will, Janice wobbled out the door in pursuit. Trespasser or not, surely she’d imagined the ill intent. Maybe this person would help her get to the hospital. If not, she’d at least like to be able to describe the intruder if she decided to report the incident to the authorities.

Avoiding the rotten board, Janice crossed the porch and trod down the front steps. A tangy Atlantic breeze billowed through her windbreaker and tossed a veil of chestnut hair across her face. With an exasperated huff, she used her good hand to brush the long strands behind her ear. She should have bound up the unruly mop in a ponytail this morning.

Where had the person gone?

Her gaze spotted no intruder scampering down the hillside strewed with boulders and tufts of greening vegetation. At the bottom of the incline, the slim ribbon of white beach lay empty except for small rocks glinting like grayish marbles amidst shiny granules of fine sand. The playful tussle between surf and sand made a chuckling, shushing sound as sunbeams danced on lacy blue waves as far as the eye could see. The sights and sounds would be calming if she weren’t in pain and alarmed by an intruder.

Clutching her throbbing wrist, she started a cautious circuit of the cottage. If someone was there she’d easily see the person. Moran Cottage poked up from the ground like an impudent blip on ten acres of overgrown pastureland. Though the cottage came with a shed and, of all things, a functional outhouse, the nearest inhabited structure lay beyond a distant stand of oak and maple trees.

At the side entrance to the kitchen, Janice climbed up pitted cement steps and tried the door, but found it locked. At least a vandal or a robber would have to break something to get in. Like the front window? What would the intruder have done if he hadn’t caught sight of her? Was the trespasser merely curious or bent on mayhem?

She moved to the rear of the cottage. Still no one. The pastureland stretched barren and empty. The outhouse was vacant and the shed was locked up tight—no hiding place there. A little farther up the back of the cottage, she found the outside cellar entrance. A rusty chain and enormous, aging padlock secured the doors. She’d need chain cutters to gain access unless the key to the old lock was somewhere among the jumble of antique furnishings and outright junk stored in a rental facility in Edgartown.

Sighing, she scanned the open field once more. Surely a trespasser wouldn’t have had time to get out of sight. Had her senses been addled by the fall so that her mind concocted from thin air the person at her window?

She plodded to the front of the cottage and up the porch steps. Gingerly finding her way over the treacherous board, she pulled her key ring from her jeans’ pocket. She needed to lock up and get to the only island hospital as best she could on her own.

Deep barks erupted from the beach area and Janice turned around. A mottled-brown dog the size of a small pony romped in a circle around a tall man who strolled along the edge of the surf. His attention was on the ocean, not on the cottage or on her.

“Hey!” Janice cried, waving her good arm in the air.

Her stomach lurched with a twinge of queasiness in reaction to prolonged pain. It was definitely a good idea to recruit help in reaching the hospital emergency room.

“Hey!” she hollered again and tottered off the porch, still waving.

The dog halted and let out staccato woofs as it stared in her direction. The animal’s master said something to it, though Janice couldn’t make out what. Then the man lifted a hand toward her and trotted up the faint path between the beach and the cottage, dog loping at his side. A gray Anorak hugged his broad shoulders, and long legs clad in a pair of faded jeans easily conquered the steep hillside. The wind ruffled thick sandy-brown hair above a broad smile.

“Hello,” the man called from yards away. “Shane Gillum here. And this is Atlas.” He patted the top of the dog’s head. “You must be my new neighbor.”

“I’m hurt,” Janice said. “Can you—”

Dizziness swept through her and she staggered back against the porch rails. A snap sounded from the roof overhang and the dog let out a sharp bark.

“Watch it!” Shane yelled, breaking into a run toward her.

A blow hammered the top of Janice’s head. Pain enveloped her skull as the sky and landscape waxed a midnight-blue shot with sparkly pinpoints of light. Then nothing.

* * *

Lips pressed into a tight line, Shane knelt beside the woman sprawled on the ground and checked the pulse at the graceful curve of her throat. Strong and steady. That much was good. Cursory examination of the wound buried beneath thick reddish-brown hair revealed a superficial cut. An amount of blood welled from the injury out of proportion to the size of the trauma—typical of head wounds—but the cleansing blood flow was already tapering off. He wouldn’t touch the site and risk infection.

However, serious injury to the skull might lurk beneath the minor cut. Shane peeled back the lids of her eyes. The pupils were of matching and normal size inside vivid green irises. Uniform pupils were another good sign, but it was too soon to become complacent. He needed to get her to a medical facility as quickly as possible.

Just before that chunk of roofing tile crashed onto her head, hadn’t she said something about being injured? Even while she was speaking to him, she’d staggered. Was one of her legs hurt?

Shane scanned the tall and slender yet very feminine length of the woman’s body. She wore a dirt-smudged blue windbreaker over a gray sweatshirt, a pair of sensible sneakers and designer jeans—expensive, unless he missed his guess—sporting a coat of dust and a small rent in the knee that looked recent and not a part of the design. He skimmed his hands down one leg and then the other. No discernible swelling.

At his side, Atlas whined. Shane ruffled the bristly fur at the dog’s neck.

“It’ll be all right, boy.” Hopefully he spoke the truth. “This wasn’t the way we’d planned to meet the new owner of Moran Cottage, if it came to it, eh?”