Familiar Stranger Read online

  “Is this something I should start getting used to?” David asked.

  Her cheeks were streaked with tears, her eyes still brimming, but she managed a weak smile as she took the tackle boxes from him and put them in the floorboard behind the front seat.

  “What? You mean crying?” she asked.

  “Um…that and being bossed around.”

  This time her smile was genuine. “Was I bossing?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “How did you feel about it?”

  He grinned back. “Scared?”

  “Oh, right,” she muttered, and held out her hand. “May I please have the car keys?”

  “And you’re driving, too? Dang, Cara, I’m not dying.”

  “Do you know where the hospital is?”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s what I thought. The keys, please.”

  He handed them to her without further argument and got into the passenger side.

  “What about the fish that we caught?” he asked.

  “Drat,” Cara muttered, as she realized she’d left her stringer of fish in the water. “Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  David watched her sprinting toward the lake, her long, slender legs making quick work of the distance. When she reached the shore, he saw her kneel and lift the stringer out of the water. But to his surprise, she didn’t bring it to the car. Instead, she gently removed each one and released them into the lake.

  When she got to the car, she tossed the empty stringer into the back seat with the rest of the tackle and brushed her hands on the seat of her pants.

  “So, I’m not going to have to clean them after all,” David said.

  She looked at the bloodstained portion of his shirt and the hook still protruding from his back, and her eyes filled with sympathetic pain.

  “I just realized how the fish must have felt when they bit the bait. I thought it was only fair that I let them go.”

  David’s heart twisted. Her empathy for suffering was humbling. He thought of all his years in the military and then his years with SPEAR and wondered, if she knew what he’d done in the name of freedom, would she still be as sympathetic to his pain?

  Chapter 5

  They walked into the emergency room, still arguing. The nurse at the admitting desk looked up, saw the blood on the man’s shirt as well as some of the same spots on Cara’s arms.

  “Cara! My word! What on earth is going on? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m not, but he is,” Cara said. “He’s got a fishhook in his back.”

  “Goodness gracious,” the nurse said. “Come this way. We’ll get that taken care of immediately.”

  In a town as small as Chiltingham, it stood to reason Cara would be recognized, but for David, a man who’d spent most of his adult life pretending to be someone else, it was a bit disconcerting.

  “How did this happen?” Frances said, as she reached for a pair of scissors and began cutting David’s shirt down the middle of the back.

  “I liked that shirt,” David muttered.

  “You can buy another one,” Cara said. “Now quit fussing and let her do her thing.”

  David wanted to glare, but the damned hook was really starting to throb. If he had to give up a good T-shirt, then so be it. Anything to get a little relief from the pain.

  “There now,” Frances said. “I’m going to get Dr. Edwards. I’ll be right back.”

  Cara bit her lower lip. Now that the shirt was gone, she could actually see how deep the hook had gone.

  “If that had hit my eye, it would have blinded me. I can’t believe you just stepped in front of it like that.”

  “It was reflex,” David said. “It didn’t amount to anything much.”

  “It’s much to me,” she muttered through tightly clenched teeth. “If I say you’re a hero, then you’re a hero.”

  At that point, a tall, skinny man who looked to be on the far side of sixty walked up to the side of the examination table where David was sitting. If it wasn’t for the white lab coat he was wearing over a Grateful Dead T-shirt and jeans, David would have doubted the man’s authenticity. This, he supposed, would be Doctor Edwards.

  “Well, now, Cara, who do we have here?” he asked, looking at Cara instead of the man on the examining table.

  David frowned. They were acting as if he was dumb, as well as bloody.

  “My name is David Wilson,” he said, answering for himself.

  “He’s my friend,” Cara said. “And if he hadn’t moved as quickly as he did, that hook would have been in my face, not his back.”

  Now Marvin Edwards looked at David, looking past the bloody condition of his clothes to the anger on his face and offered his hand.

  “Then on behalf of the residents of Chiltingham, let me be the one to thank you. Cara is a much beloved member of this community and it seems you have averted a tragedy. I like to fish myself, and know how these things can happen. One minute a fish is on the hook and the next it’s not. Those hooks can come flying, especially if there is a lot of tension on the line. How did you react so quickly?”

  David wasn’t in the mood to explain that it had been the same instinct he’d had a thousand times before in the jungles of Vietnam.

  Knowing a sniper was hidden somewhere up a tree.

  Knowing there were booby traps on the trail up ahead although nothing could be seen.

  Knowing that the smiling old man who appeared on the trail in front of him was holding an unpinned hand grenade beneath the sheaves of rice.

  It was an ingrained sense to survive. Or in this instance. to protect.

  “I don’t know. I just did,” he said.

  Marvin Edwards smiled, satisfied with David’s reticent attitude. He could respect that. There were plenty of times when he didn’t much want to talk. Unfortunately, in his line of work, he didn’t have the luxury of clamming up.

  With the shirt off his patient’s back, Marvin ran his fingers across the multitude of scars on David’s body without comment, then waved at Frances.

  “Get me a syringe, Frances. We’re going to need to deaden this area first.”

  The nurse busied herself at a nearby table while David fidgeted beneath Cara’s worried gaze.

  “Look,” David said. “Trust me, Doc, this is nothing. I’ve been hurt enough times in my life to know the difference.”

  “Then humor me so I can humor our friend Cara Justice. What do you say?”

  David grimaced. “Fine. Look and dig. It’s just a hook.”

  Marvin Edwards grinned. “Look and dig? I spent all those years and all that money on medical school just so I could look and dig?”

  The older man’s sarcasm almost made David grin. “Sorry. Figure of speech.”

  “Apology accepted,” Marvin said, as he closed the curtain around the examining table and took the syringe the nurse handed him.

  “Here goes nothing. Please don’t move.”

  David sighed, barely aware when the doctor shoved the needle into his back, but he winked at Cara, who looked as if she was going to cry.

  “Honey, why don’t you go find a bathroom and wash that blood off your hands?”

  “Are you saying you don’t want me here?” she asked.

  “No. I’m saying you don’t need to be here. You’re going to cry again and it’s really not a big deal, okay?”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  “I figured that.”

  She slipped out of the curtained area, leaving the two men alone.

  “So…David, is it?”

  David nodded.

  “Exactly what line of business are you in?”

  “I’m semi-retired,” David said.

  “Um, I see. But before…what did you do?”

  David didn’t respond.

  Marvin Edwards glanced up. The expression on the man’s face was closed, so he tried another topic.

  “Are you just visiting,
or planning to stay?” he asked, as he reached for a small scalpel.

  David didn’t answer.

  Marvin grunted. So the man wasn’t a talker. That was all right with him.

  “This might sting a little,” he said, as he made the first cut. “Frances, swab that for me, will you?”

  The nurse caught the instant flow of blood as he lifted the scalpel from David’s flesh.

  He made another small cut and then laid down the scalpel and picked up an instrument that looked to David a whole lot like the damned needle-nosed pliers he’d wanted in the first place. With a couple of tugs and one small sideways twist, the hook came out.

  “That’s got it,” Marvin said. “Flood it with disinfectant, Frances, then I’ll stitch it up.”

  David felt cold fluid running down his back, but nothing more. That would come later, when the shot wore off.

  In between stitches, the doctor watched David’s face, absently noting the military-straight set to his shoulders and an unflinching stare. It reminded him of a drill sergeant he’d known and hated.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  David sighed. How the hell did he answer that one? Then he remembered what Cara had done yesterday and took his cue from her.

  “David Wilson.”

  “I knew Cara and her husband for years. I never heard either of them mention you before.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” David said.

  This wasn’t the answer Marvin was looking for.

  “Look, I’m not being nosy.” Then he sighed. “Well, yes, maybe I am, a bit. Cara’s a widow. Sometimes widows can be very vulnerable. I would not like to see—”

  David took a deep breath and jumped in with both feet. “Do you know Cara’s daughter Bethany?”

  “Sure do. I delivered all three of her children.”

  “I’m Bethany’s father.”

  Marvin Edwards’s jaw dropped, but only momentarily.

  “I’m sorry. I never heard them mention—”

  “They thought I was dead.”

  “For all these years?”

  David shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Suddenly, Marvin Edwards began to see things in a different light. The horrific scars on this man. The secrets. The military bearing of a man who was supposed to be dead. His gaze sharpened.

  “I was a medic in Nam,” Marvin said softly.

  David shifted. “You must have been pretty young.”

  “Yes, a lot of us went in too young, didn’t we?”

  David resisted an urge to look around lest they be overheard. And then he realized it no longer mattered. Lots of people were veterans, which is exactly what he’d become. Finally, he nodded.

  “So, did you die on your own, or did Uncle Sam help you?”

  Again, David was surprised by the man’s perceptions.

  “It’s no longer a factor in my life,” David said.

  “You planning to stick around?”

  David sighed. “I would like nothing better.” He refused to acknowledge, even to himself, that there was still a huge obstacle between him and a normal life.

  Marvin grinned and held out his hand. “Then, welcome home, soldier.”

  David knew he was shaking the doctor’s hand, but he couldn’t feel it. He could tell that the man was still talking, because he could see his lips moving, but he couldn’t hear what was being said. All sound had faded except Marvin Edwards’s last words. He’d never thought of himself as a man without a country, because he’d given a good portion of his life in helping keep it safe, but it was true. Until this moment, David Wilson had never truly come home from Vietnam. The emotion of it all almost nailed him. His hands were shaking as the doctor continued to talk.

  “So,” Marvin said, as he took his last stitch. “Do you golf?”

  It was the most benign question David had been asked in over forty years, and he didn’t know how to answer it. Coping with the innocence of everyday life was more difficult than he would have believed.

  “No. Can’t say that I do.”

  “Shame,” Marvin said. “I’m always looking for a buddy to play the front nine.”

  “I thought doctors were supposed to be notorious for their eighteen-hole games,” David said.

  Marvin shrugged. “Not doctors in towns this size. We’re always on call and it seems as if I always get paged before I get to the back nine.”

  Before David could respond, Cara returned.

  “Is he okay?” she asked.

  “Ask me,” David muttered. “I’m the one to whom he shoved a knife in the back.”

  Cara blinked, then grinned as Marvin Edwards calmly ignored David’s petulance and answered.

  “Right as rain,” Marvin said. “And he’ll be just as pretty as he was before. My stitches are as good as my grannie’s quilting stitches were.”

  David resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Quilting stitches? Have mercy.

  Marvin Edwards put a small bandage over the stitches and then gave David a thump on the thigh. “Don’t forget what I said about that golf.”

  David nodded. “I remember…I remember everything you said.” He hesitated, and then impulsively shook the doctor’s hand. “And I thank you.”

  “For what?” Marvin asked.

  The words “welcome home, soldier” were still ringing in his ears, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit how much they’d meant. Instead, he just shrugged.

  “For everything.”

  “You’ll get my bill,” Marvin said, and handed him a prescription for pain pills.

  “What’s that?” David asked.

  “Something for the pain.”

  “I won’t need it,” David said.

  Marvin Edwards arched an eyebrow, purposefully letting his gaze linger on the big scar on David’s chest.

  “Oh, right, what was I thinking?”

  Cara ignored them both and took the prescription from David before he could protest.

  “We’ll get it filled at the drive-through pharmacy,” she said.

  “Better yet, take these instead,” Marvin said, and handed Cara some pharmaceutical samples from a drawer.

  “Thank you, Dr. Edwards.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, than waved a finger in David’s face. “Mind that woman, you hear me, boy?”

  David didn’t answer, but a smile teased the corners of his mouth as they left the hospital.

  “I’m still driving,” Cara said.

  David didn’t argue.

  “I like that,” Cara said.

  “Like what?” David asked, as she started the car.

  “That smile on your face. You should wear it more often.”

  David thought about waking up beside Cara each morning and sleeping beside her each night. Of buying groceries and getting haircuts and playing golf with a friend. Yes, it would be easy to smile about a life like that.

  “You think?” he asked, and gave her a wink.

  “Yes, I think. Now make yourself comfortable, darling. We’re going straight home.”

  Home.

  God. His fingers curled in his lap as Cara accelerated the car.

  Frank stood before the bathroom mirror, adjusting his wig and running his fingers over the mustache he’d affected, testing its position. Everything seemed stable enough. He straightened the collar of his white Gucci shirt, checked one last time to make sure it was tucked neatly into his navy blue slacks, then picked up the sunglasses from the back of the commode and slipped them on before looking up.

  Perfect! The man in the mirror was a stranger.

  He grinned, and as he did, the movement puckered the burn scars on the side of his face, giving him a slightly demonic expression. If she’d still been alive, his own mother would not have recognized him.

  Frank was a master at disguise. It had kept him alive all these years without detection. He had no reason to suppose it would fail him now. The wound on his shoulder was almost well. Only now and then did he feel a
real twinge of pain. The fact that he was missing most of the top half of one ear was hidden nicely by the hairstyle of the wig.

  Convinced that all was well, he strode out of the bathroom, picked up the suitcase he’d packed last night and then paused at the door, giving the apartment a final look. Satisfied that he’d left nothing of himself behind, he opened the door and walked out. No more roach motel. It was time to move up and on, which meant once again changing his persona.

  When he passed through the lobby, he tossed the room key on the desk and kept on walking. The clerk didn’t bother to look up, which was just as well, because he wouldn’t have recognized the man as the former resident of room 413.

  Frank was on the street less than a minute before hailing an empty cab.

  “Where to, buddy?” the cab driver asked.

  “LAX, and step on it,” he said. “I’ve got a flight to catch.”

  David lay on his side on the bed. At Cara’s insistence, he was supposed to be resting, but in truth, he had a lot of thinking to do. Before he’d come, his expectations of seeing Cara had not included a future. All he’d wanted to do was see her—ask her forgiveness—and if possible make a place for himself within his daughter’s life. Not as a father, of course. He didn’t deserve that much consideration. But he wanted to know her—and he wanted her to know him. That had been the apex of his dream. Making love to Cara within minutes of his arrival would never have occurred to him, not even in his wildest imagination. But it had happened and he had accepted the fact that she’d been making love to the boy he’d been, not the man that he’d become. However, that didn’t account for the other times since, or the fact that Cara had openly admitted she wanted him to stay. And he wanted to, desperately so. He wasn’t going to lose her again.

  Somehow, he had to find a way to stop Frank for good without losing his life in the process. Frustrated with the mess he was in, he rolled over on his back, wincing slightly as the pressure caused a slight pain, then he closed his eyes. In spite of himself, the pain pills were having their way.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been sleeping when the phone rang. He woke abruptly, waiting for Cara to answer, but she didn’t. On the fourth ring, he thought he heard water running from the faucet outside and realized she must not be in the house. He reached for the phone and answered as it rang again.