Wounded (a mystery and a sweet romance)

Wounded: Chapter 9 Part 1

The tide was out, leaving the sand-and-pebble beach strewn with seaweed and kelp. Gentle waves lapped at the shore, and sailboats dotted the Strait, the dark blue water burnished orange by the evening sun. This time of year, the days were long, but Tara could feel the chill in the wind. Her blouse had been warm enough earlier, but she regretted not bringing a sweater.

You’re not going to be down here long, she reminded herself, glancing back at the cliff and the beach for the umpteenth time. She had walked far enough that the trail was out of sight, so nobody should be able to see her unless they came down from a property farther west. She wasn’t sure if there were properties farther west or if the National Forest boundary came down to the water.

Before Tara reached the log, she had the tablet open to the email program. There wasn’t much reception, and she waited impatiently for the message to load. She would feel foolish if she had swiped Malcolm’s tablet because of the alert for some penis enlargement spam. But the new message was from a David Baumhaus with a University of Washington email address.

“Promising,” she murmured and tapped it open.

Hey Malcolm,

 

Good to hear from you. I did some checking on the Fomitopsis officinalis. There’s nothing new in PubMed or any of the UW databases, but get this: a month ago, there was a theft of all the Fomitopsis officinalis strains from a private research facility outside of Olympia. At the same time, the GenBank at the National Center for Biotechnology Information in Maryland was hacked and the strains that had been sequenced were copied. The fungus contains antiviral molecules that are relatively new to science, even though the Greeks used the “quinine conk” for fighting tuberculosis. In addition, the North American strains show high activity against swine and bird flu viruses as well as herpes.

Fomitopsis officinalis is every bit as rare as you thought. It only grows in old-growth forests in select parts of the world, with the more recent and most promising strains coming out of the Pacific Northwest. You might want to get in touch with some of your picker resources and see if anyone is offering a big payday for samples.

 

David

“Well, that’s interesting, but what the heck is a Fo-mi-top-sis officia-thingie?” Tara didn’t remember seeing any mushrooms poking up around those trees, though she supposed they could be underground, like truffles. That would explain why their mystery intruder couldn’t simply sneak onto the property, pull them up, and sneak off.

Tara copied the term and pasted it into an image search. Thanks to the weak cell signal, it took forever. She flipped over to Malcolm’s blog post while she was waiting. After all, he had invited her to read it.

It didn’t take more than a few lines before she was thankful she hadn’t read it with him standing by, waiting for a reaction. She was sure it would be perfectly brilliant in some peer-reviewed journal devoured by diehard mycologists. But for a blog post to draw newbies into the field? Enh. By the time she finished, she was sure of two things. First, if his street—or forest—smarts matched his book smarts, he ought to be bright enough to elude those troopers in the woods. Second, he was a total science geek. She supposed the graduate school studies had hinted at that, but his killer calves—and the rest of his physique—had fooled her. Or maybe it had been his surliness and his short temper.

Ignoring the darkening skies and the increasingly chilly air, Tara copied his blog post into a new file and started editing it. If he wanted to keep the academic treatise, she wouldn’t argue. But just in case he was open to a different style, she would give him another option. She could probably get four or five blog posts out of his beast. While she worked, she decided to encourage him to film a few videos. He didn’t come across as geeky and inaccessible during everyday conversation. Some professor at WSU had probably encouraged this... erudite writing style. Erudite, yes, that’s what she would call it if he asked. Boring didn’t sound nearly so diplomatic.

Sometime around the third blog post, Tara noticed how dark it had grown on either side of the glowing tablet screen. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, then nearly fell off the log. She couldn’t make out the water twenty feet away, nor much of anything except the lights over on Vancouver Island. She hadn’t meant to stay out here so long, nor was she certain she could find the trail up the cliff in the dark.

“You’ve got the flashlight app on your phone,” Tara reminded herself. Even so...

She eyed the black wall of rock behind her without enthusiasm. She turned off the tablet and stood up. Remembering her plan to leave it there, she hesitated. What if it rained? What if Malcolm was up in the woods and never thought to come down to the beach? She admitted that she had settled onto the log with the vague hope that he might find her there, but he was probably ten miles away by now, leading those troopers on a wild chase.

She stuck the tablet in her purse, which was bulging already thanks to the wine bottle, and took out her phone, tapping the flashlight app. She trundled along the beach, veering toward the cliff. How far had she walked on the way down? It would be hard to find the trail with the weak illumination.

Before Tara had gone far, lights on the side of the cliff made her halt. She killed her phone. Her first thought was that it was Malcolm, but there were two lights. She eased closer to the cliff.

They were flashlights, high-powered ones with the beams angled toward the trail. Tara couldn’t see the faces of those who carried them. Could the deputies and troopers still be around? How far had she walked? Was this the trail leading up to Malcolm’s property? Or the one leading to the eco village? Maybe Jasmine and the others had worried when she hadn’t come back from that long walk she had told them she was going on. Good grief, why hadn’t she driven her car over? She could have told them she was going into town or anywhere except next door.

The stocky figures marching down the trail didn’t look like her friends from the village. When one of the beams swept out over the beach, she glimpsed the other man’s clothes for a moment, his uniform. Yes, those were the Clallam County guys. That meant they hadn’t caught Malcolm yet. Good. But if they found her wandering about on the beach in the dark, what would they think? Brenner had already been suspicious of her.

She thought about going back the way she had come, but she didn’t want to get stuck farther from the village. Better to hide and let them pass. Then she could trot up the trail behind them. All she needed was a good hiding spot. Too bad she couldn’t see anything around her except the cliff. She patted her way along that, hoping for a niche that she could squeeze into.

Instead, her shin smacked into something in front of her, and she pitched over it. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, though she banged her knee hard and landed in a bruised heap on the opposite side of the log. If she thought kicking the driftwood would have hurt it more than it hurt her, she would have done so.

The powerful flashlight beam that had been sweeping over the beach near the water veered in her direction. Tara cursed silently and flung herself over the log. She hadn’t thought the men were close enough to hear her, but they must have.

The beam highlighted sand and pebbles, then reflected off the damp cliff wall above her. She flattened herself to her back. She couldn’t see the men, but she couldn’t miss the light sweeping about, probing the ground all about her. Finally, it receded. Tara didn’t lift her head, but she did roll to her belly, then squirmed toward the end of the log. She was in darkness again and risked sticking her head out.

The deputies had continued down and were almost to the beach. They reached the sand and, without hesitation, they strode in her direction. Damn it, they must have seen her or heard enough to be confident something was down here. And something was. She rolled onto her back again and thumped her head against the sand. Now what? Pretend she had been out for a walk and had lost track of the time? Yeah, sure, she shouldn’t have hidden if that was going to be her excuse. She would look nothing but guilty when they found her hiding behind the log. Somehow she doubted they would believe she had lain down to take an evening nap and had fallen asleep there. While cold and shivering. The chill rose up from the sand, pressing against her back through the blouse. Again she wished she had thought to grab a jacket.

The light swept the beach around her again, splashing against her log. They were closer now, and she heard their voices.

“...sure I saw something.”

“Check over there.”