Page 5

RED JOE

“O h, Jesus,” Eddie Hawthorne said, sitting on a chair in my kitchen and dripping all over the floor. “I fainted, didn’t I? I legit fainted?”

“No, it wasn’t a faint,” I assured him, pressing a clean tea towel to the cut on the side of his head. “It was more of a swoon than anything.”

He winced. “That’s worse. Swoon is definitely worse.”

“It was a very manly swoon though.”

His mouth twitched, and then he winced again. “Holy hell. That hurts.”

Hiccup sat beside him, her head resting on his thigh as she stared up at him, large-eyed and soulful.

“Can you hold that there?” I asked. “I’ll get the first aid kit. I don’t think it needs stitches, but I need a better look at it first.”

“Stitches?” Eddie let out a pained moan. “I can’t go to the hospital!”

“Good news,” I said. “There is no hospital. There’s not even a doctor on the island. But I don’t think it looks that bad.”

Eddie made another small noise, and his cold fingers slid across mine as he took over the task of holding the tea towel. “No doctor? What happens in an emergency?”

“We call for a boat,” I said. “Or an airlift. Don’t worry though. You’re not that bad.”

The medical chest sat in a corner of the kitchen.

It was a large green metal box that stayed locked at all times.

I kept one key for the chest on the same ring as the lighthouse keys.

The spare key hung from a hook on the fridge.

I dragged the chest over to where Eddie was sitting, the metal scraping against the stone floor of the kitchen.

“That’s a hell of a first aid kit,” Eddie murmured.

I unlocked it. “It’s a medical chest from the Flying Doctors.

Everything’s numbered, so if I radio them up and tell them someone’s symptoms, they tell me exactly what number drug to dispense and how much.

” I lifted the first tray out of the chest, looking for the bandages and antiseptic underneath.

“But we won’t need any of that. Just the same first aid stuff you have at home. ”

“You’re like the island nurse.”

“Nope.” I found the sterile wipes and bandages I was after. “I’m just the guy who can follow basic instructions and be trusted with the key.”

I stood in front of Eddie and put my hand over his.

I drew the tea towel away carefully, and Eddie flinched.

The cut wasn’t as bad as it had first seemed.

The bleeding had slowed to a sluggish dribble, and the wound itself was only shallow.

It cut through his hairline and an inch or so down his right temple.

He’d have a hell of a bruise and a headache in the morning, but it likely wasn’t anything that would require calling in a medivac.

“This will sting a little,” I warned, and dabbed at the wound with antiseptic.

Eddie closed his eyes and wrinkled his nose. “Ouch.”

Jesus. He was cute.

“What were you doing out of your tent anyway?” I asked, careful to wipe his hair away from the shallow laceration.

“I…” Eddie opened his eyes again, his brow furrowing.

“I wasn’t out of my tent. I was sleeping, or trying to, in the storm, and somebody attacked me!

” The colour bled suddenly from his face, and he wrenched his shirt up to reveal a plastic-wrapped package tucked into the waistband of his pants.

“Oh, thank God! It’s okay! What if I’d dropped it? ”

“What?” I asked. Attacked? Nothing about that made sense. This was Dauntless, not Sydney. “What are you talking about?”

“The diary!” Eddie repeated, drawing the package out and hugging it close. “Henry Jessup’s diary!”

* * *

I was mad to come out in weather like this.

Even Hiccup wasn’t dumb enough to join me.

She’d elected to stay in the warm, dry kitchen, bum planted on Eddie’s feet.

So I set out into the night alone, wearing my oilskin coat, my boots, and carrying my Maglite torch.

The beam bounced over the steep terrain as I picked my way down the hill.

I kept my gaze fixed on the path as lightning blazed over the ocean, knowing that to lose my footing would be dangerous.

Deadly, even. One wrong step, and it was a long fall to the narrow, rocky beach below.

I’d known where Eddie’s campsite must be from the moment he’d said he was up near the lighthouse.

The hill flattened and formed a sort of a wide lip before dropping off steeply again.

Four or five wind-battered pine trees grew there, leaning away from the ocean.

It was a beautiful spot to camp in summer but freezing in the winter.

When I reached the spot, the storm still crashing around me, I saw a one-man tent, bright yellow and half-collapsed. I went closer, shining the torch over the site.

My heart skipped a beat.

The tent had taken a beating alright, but not from the weather.

The only way it should have been battered like this was if a tree had come down on top of it, but there was no debris.

Eddie had said he’d been trying to sleep, and someone had attacked him—bashing the tent repeatedly with him inside—and it seemed as though that might be the truth.

The tent was unzipped, evidence of Eddie’s frantic departure.

Jesus. He was lucky he’d remembered his way and hadn’t stumbled over the edge of the bluff.

I hunkered down and crawled inside.

Eddie’s pack was still there, the contents strewn.

Everything was wet and muddy, even the camera bag and the laptop case—though there was no laptop to be found—and the couple of books.

I shoved everything into the backpack. I couldn’t do a damn thing about the tent, but I could at least return the rest of Eddie’s belongings.

Lightning split the sky over the ocean again as I trudged back up the steep hill, my boots sliding on the narrow, wet path.

Cold wind buffeted me. My oilskin, great for the short dash between the cottage and the lighthouse, couldn’t do much when the wind kept trying to whip it off me.

Rain slid down the back of my neck. I was panting by the time I made it back to the lighthouse, its beam sure and steady even as rain pounded against the windows of the lantern room.

I hurried across the wet grass, toward the warm kitchen light from my cottage, eager to be warm and dry again. Hiccup met me at the back door, her tail swinging, and she had the decency to look at least a little shamefaced for letting me face the storm alone.

“You’re okay,” I told her, my cold fingers brushing the top of her head. “You’re a smart girl, aren’t you? You heard Eddie coming and knew that he needed help.”

Eddie wasn’t in the kitchen. Before I’d left, I’d given him some dry clothes and told him to feel free to use the shower. I couldn’t hear water running above the sound of the rain hitting the roof, but I peered down the hallway and saw the bathroom door was closed.

I set Eddie’s pack on the kitchen floor, grimacing at the puddle that formed instantly underneath it. I shrugged my coat off and hung it on the hook behind the door, then sat down to unlace my boots.

In my socked feet, I headed into my bedroom and quickly stripped off my damp shirt and pullover and replaced them with a soft, faded T-shirt and the brown and green Fair Isle jumper that had once belonged to my father.

I returned to the kitchen and put a saucepan of milk on the stove. I was stirring the cocoa in when I heard Eddie’s gasp of dismay.

“My stuff!”

I turned around to see him pulling everything out of his backpack.

“It’s all wet!”

“Sorry,” I said. “Everything was strewn over your tent when I got there, and the rain was getting in. And if there was a laptop in that case, it’s gone.”

“Shit.” Eddie sat down heavily on the floor and dragged a hand through his hair. He winced when he hit his wound. “Wow, he really got me good there, didn’t he?”

A mix of guilt and anger stirred in my gut.

Guilt because Eddie was a guest on the island, and anger toward whoever had done such a terrible thing.

Underneath it all there was a growing feeling of possessiveness, the same one I’d been trying to ignore for most of my life.

The one that reminded me I was a Nesmith, and anything that happened here on Dauntless was my responsibility.

Yeah, I’m sure it was all down to ancestral memory and tradition, and not Eddie’s big, dark eyes, his trembling lower lip, and the way they made me want to hunt down whoever had hurt him and beat the crap out of them in return.

Eddie stared at me, clasping his hands together. “If I hadn’t managed to get out and start running, I think they just would have kept hitting me! Like, I legit thought I was going to die.”

I tried not to think about how much I wanted to fold him into a hug. “Did you get a look at him?”

Eddie climbed to his feet and sat at the table.

“Not really. It was dark. Like, there was a shape, but when I got out of the tent I just started running. I came out on top of the hill somewhere and I saw the lighthouse. It was further away than I thought. I must’ve got turned around somehow.

” He drew in a shaking breath. “So I saw the lighthouse, and just ran here.”

My stomach twisted. It was terrible that someone had attacked Eddie—almost unthinkable—but the proof of it was sitting right in front of me, and the cut on the side of his head was starting to ooze again. The heat from the shower must have got the blood flowing.

I picked through the bandages and dressings I’d left on the kitchen table. “We need to change that, I think.”

Eddie’s forehead creased as I redressed his wound.

I was careful as I worked, watching Eddie’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks. A muscle in his cheek jumped when I put the new dressing on, and I fought the urge to follow the movement with the pad of my thumb.

“Okay,” I said, swallowing and taking a safe step back. “That’s done.”