Body Search by Jessica Andersen Read Free Book Online

even think you’re calling the shots here, Dale. I won’t stand for it. I could have died in that plane crash. Don’t you think that entitles me to know what the hell is going on?”
    “No,” he snapped back from the second floor. “Ithink it entitles you to a one-way ticket home the second I can arrange it. I knew I shouldn’t have let you come with me.”
    “Let me?” Her voice climbed several octaves, though she wasn’t sure why she was fighting the idea. She should want to escape the island. To escape Dale and the insane pull he exerted on her. “Let me? Nobody let me do anything, Dale. This is my job, and—”
    The slam of the bathroom door cut her off.
    “Oooh,” she said, popping the first of the cases open. “Jerk.”
    All her life it had been this way. Her father had shared his wealth freely with his only child—as well as his mistresses—but he’d expected her to marry well and bring her husband into the family business. Her mother had nodded and smiled in public, then gone through his pockets at night, weeping over the matchbooks and hotel receipts.
    For all Tansy knew, she still did.
    They’d been horrified when Tansy had used part of her trust fund to pay for med school and donated the rest to HFH. She’d met Dale on her first assignment. He’d shoved a field pack at her and said, “Dale Metcalf. Glad to have you here. There are two little girls trapped under a beam in the second house on the right. Don’t slow me down.”
    And though she’d later learned—or thought she had—that he came from the same social stratum as her parents, Dale had never coddled her, never expected any less of her than he did from the male doctors. At first, it had been a relief. Then an annoyance when she realized it was because he never let anyone past the brittle outer shell of false charm.
    Never let anyone inside.
    “Well,” she muttered, glancing again at the dark squares of wood on the walls, wondering what story the missing pictures might have told. “I’m inside. Sort of. Now what the hell do I do?”
    “Is this a private conversation, or may I intrude?”
    Tansy screeched and spun toward the voice, jerking her hands into the attack position she’d been taught before her first overseas assignment. Go for the eyes and the crotch, the instructor’s voice shouted in her head. Use any weapon you can find!
    The stranger stumbled back a pace and held his hands up. “Whoa, whoa! Easy there.”
    She froze, vibrating with a tension she hadn’t consciously recognized. Then again, her reaction was understandable. Alice had fallen down the rabbit hole, into the ocean, and come out somewhere on an island populated by Dale Metcalf clones. It hadn’t been a banner day up to this point. Considering their next stop was a makeshift clinic where people were dying of a nonfatal disease, she had little hope of it improving.
    Especially not with a stranger standing in the kitchen.
    She glared at the tall, silver-haired man, and was almost surprised to see that his eyes were brown, not blue. She relaxed a fraction, though she kept herweight on the balls of her feet as she’d been taught. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
    The water cut off upstairs. She raised her voice and called, “Dale? We have company.”
    The stranger’s eyes glinted with approval. “Smart of you, though not necessary. I know you’re not alone. I’ve come to give you and Dale a ride to the clinic.” He held out a hand. “I’m Walter Churchill.”
    Of all the characters she’d met so far in this not-quite-Wonderland, Churchill was the biggest surprise. Cultured, elegant, and turned out in a charcoal suit and burgundy tie, he would have been right at home in one of the chichi clubs in the Theater District near Boston General. He also acted as though she should know him.
    Then again, she probably would know him if Dale had told her the truth about his past.
    Stifling the flash of resentment, she shook the proffered hand.