Read Diamond Bay for Free Online

much blood and sand out
of his hair as she could, feeling the thick strands come unmatted between her
fingers. Her fingertips found a swelling lump on the right side of his head,
just past the hairline at his temple, and she pushed the hair aside to reveal a
jagged tear in the skin. Not a gunshot wound, though. It was as if he'd hit his
head, or been hit with something. But why was he unconscious now? He had been
swimming when she'd first seen him, so he'd been conscious then, coming in on
the surge of the tide. He hadn't lost consciousness until he was already inside
the mouth of Diamond Bay.
    She pressed the cloth to the lump, trying to clean sand out of the
cut. Had he hit his head on one of the huge, jagged rocks that lined the mouth
of the bay? At low tide they were just under the surface of the water and
difficult to avoid unless you knew exactly where they were placed. Knowing what
she did about the bay, Rachel decided that that was exactly what had happened,
and she bit her lip at the thought of dragging the man around the way she had
when he was probably suffering from a concussion. What if her imagination was
running wild with her, and she caused the man's death with her fears and
hesitation? A concussion was serious, and so was a gunshot wound. Oh, God, was
she doing the right thing? Had he been shot by accident and fallen overboard at night, then lost
his bearings from pain and confusion? Was
someone frantically searching for him right now?
    She stared blindly down at him, her hand moving to touch his
shoulder as if in apology, her fingers stroking lightly over his warm, darkly
tanned skin. What a fool she was! The best thing she could do for this man would
be to call the rescue squad immediately and hope that she hadn't done any
additional damage to him with her rough handling. She started to get to her
feet, to forget her crazy fancies and do the sensible thing, when she realized
that she had been staring at his legs, and that the left one had a knotted
strip of denim tied around it. Denim. He'd had denim tied around his shoulder,
too. Her spine tingled warily, and she left her position by his head to crawl
down to his leg, already afraid of what she would find. She couldn't untie the
knot; it was pulled too tightly, and the water had only tightened it.
    She got a pair of scissors out of her sewing basket and neatly
sliced the fabric. The scissors slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers as
she stared down at his thigh, at the ugly wound in the outer muscle. He'd been
shot in the leg, too. She examined his leg almost clinically; there were both
entry and exit wounds, so at least the bullet wasn't still inside him. He
hadn't been so lucky with his shoulder.
    No one was shot twice by accident. Someone had deliberately
tried to kill him.
    "I won't let it happen!" she said fiercely, the sound of
her own voice startling her. She didn't know the man who lay on the floor,
unmoving and unresponsive, but she crouched over him with all the
protectiveness of a lioness for a helpless cub. Until she knew what was going
on, no one was going to get a chance to hurt this man.
    Her hands gentle, she began washing him as best she could. His
nudity didn't embarrass her, under the circumstances she felt it would be silly
to flinch from his bare flesh. He was wounded, helpless; had she walked up on him sunbathing in the nude, that would have been a different kettle of
fish entirely, but he needed her now, and she wasn't about to let modesty
prevent her from helping him.
    She heard the sound of a car coming down her road and got hastily
to her feet. That should be Honey, and though Joe normally wasn't as hostile to
women as he was to men, after the unusual events of the night he might be on
edge and take it out on the vet. Rachel unlocked the front door and opened it,
stepping out on the front porch. She couldn't see Joe, but a low growl issued
from beneath the oleander shrub, and she spoke quietly to him as Honey's car
turned into