Clay (7 page)

“You love it,” she said in quiet discovery.

He lifted a shoulder. “Crazy, but there you are.”

“I don’t think it’s crazy at all.” She paused, veiling her expression with her lashes. Finally she asked, “I don’t suppose you’d know anything about dye plants for blue color that might grow here?”

“Dye plants?”

“I make hand-dyed fabrics with native materials on commission for a specialty house, as well as designing. Natural dyes are never the same because so many variables go into making them, including degrees of color material within the plant matter itself. Fabrics dyed by hand with natural dye stuffs are one of a kind, always unique.”

“And more expensive because of it?”

Her smile was cool. “As you say, but also a lot of work to produce.”

“Why do these plants have to make blue dye?”

“It’s the rarest of all colors from natural dyes. You can find material to create infinite shades of green, yellow, brown or even red, but only a handful of plants give a truly blue hue.”

“Such as false indigo or maybe black elderberries?”

She stared at him a long moment. “You know something about it.”

“A bit. I tried tanning and decorating my own leather as a teenager, like a Native American.”

“I have indigo and elderberries, at least in their dried state. I was hoping for something better, or more rare.”

“You asked Arty, I suppose?”

Her smile was almost whimsical. “Critters are more his thing than plants, to hear him tell it. He said that the man I needed was you.”

At that auspicious turn of phrase, Clay swung his head around to meet her gray gaze. And suddenly he was awash in the same heated craving that he had battled for half the night: the need to feel her softness and warmth against him once more, the urge to free her hair and spread it out around and over her like a shimmering veil. The primal inclination to bury himself in her and be lost in soft, velvet wonder.

For the barest portion of a second, he wondered if he was being wooed, if possibly she had decided that she required a bed partner, if not a sex slave, after all. She seemed that approachable, that sweetly vulnerable.

Then reality kicked in and he had to question where she could be headed with such a come-on. Also what she would ask of him once she had him where she wanted him.

He needed a distraction and needed it badly, for himself if not for her. Deliberately, he asked, “Ever hear of a plant called Aphrodite’s Cup?”

Her gaze was open, receptive. “I’ve come across it once or twice in old books. Extinct, isn’t it?”

“Not quite. The color it makes is almost indescribable, not a true blue but rather an aqua. The color is darker than that, however, more blue than teal, but more green than turquoise, and with just a smidgen of purple in it.”

“It sounds breathtaking.”

“The French were wild about it during Louisiana’s colonial days, in the early 1700s, because it blended so well with all the soft grays and corals that were fashionable then. That’s a major reason why it’s almost nonexistent now. The old French settlers called the dye they made from it
couleur de l’amour,
the Color of Love.”

She stared at him a long moment, her gaze searching his, before she asked, “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Would I do that?”

“With pleasure, I’m sure.”

She had him there. Turning away from her, he said over his shoulder, “Fine. Then I guess you don’t want to hear any more.”

“You’re saying you can really take me to this plant?”

“Maybe.”

“If I’ll let you go, I suppose.” Her tone was jaundiced.

“It’s going to be hard doing it while shut up in here. Turn me loose and I’ll take you anywhere you want.”

She opened her mouth to answer but was forestalled by the slamming of a door.

“Janna? Janna, gal! You home?”

Saved by good old Arty, Clay thought. Saved from doing or saying something fatally stupid, or stupidly fatal, like telling Janna Kerr that he’d take her any way he could get her. He had been that close to forgetting where he was and how he had come to be there. Not to mention what he was beginning to fear that she wanted from him.

It was possible Janna felt the same relief, for she got to her feet and moved swiftly from the room on her way to the back door. “Here, Arty,” she called. “Come on in!”

She didn’t return. Clay could hear that old reprobate, Alligator Arty, jawing with her in the kitchen. From the little he could catch, it appeared that Arty had come around to check on Janna and Lainey, and also to bring a meal of live crawfish for the raccoon that he’d given Lainey. The crustaceans were a favorite of this friendly little critter that he’d found wandering around lost, or so he claimed. Clay didn’t doubt the food preference a bit, though he suspected
that the animal had actually been caught in one of Arty’s traps.

The old humbug also hinted broadly that it was getting on toward lunchtime and he wouldn’t say no to an invitation. So familiar with Janna and Lainey’s routine was he that it was obvious he’d been making himself at home at the camp. Knowing Arty, Clay was sure that he’d helped out around the place by way of thanks; he was of a generation that didn’t believe in taking without giving in return.

At the same time, the idea of Arty hanging around made Clay a little uneasy. The old guy was a salt-of-the-earth type, but even his best friend couldn’t call him more than half housebroken. Hearing him ask how the prisoner was holding up, so he was forced to realize that Arty still had no intention of helping him, did nothing for his misgivings. That was the problem with small places like the camp house; it was too easy to overhear more than was comfortable.

“It’s about time you showed your ugly face in here,” he said when Arty finally stopped gossiping and stepped back to the bedroom to pay his respects.

“Now don’t get yourself all riled up, boy. It ain’t as if you was going anywhere.”

“Thanks to you.”

“I told you how that was,” Arty protested in aggrieved tones.

“So you did, which doesn’t make it right. You owe me.”

“I brought you some clothes, didn’t I?” The old trapper waved the overstuffed paper bag that he car
ried. “Sneaked in the back window at your place to get hold of them, just so you wouldn’t have to go nekkid. What more you want?”

Clay would be glad to have a change or two of underwear, if nothing else, was even grateful that Arty—or was it Janna?—had thought of it. Still, he was too much of a Benedict to like the idea of someone entering his home while he was away. His voice hard, he said, “Thank you very much. But don’t do it again.”

Arty gave him a wry look. “Ain’t you in a stinking mood?”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Since that required no answer, Clay went on without pause. “Tell me something. You ever hear Janna say anything about a kidney transplant for Lainey?”

Arty rubbed at the bristling beard on his face. “Can’t say as I have. But I ain’t bad to get into people’s business.”

That was an understatement. Arty seldom asked questions of any kind, mainly because he didn’t intend to answer any himself. “She’s never mentioned any kind of connection to the Benedicts?”

“Family tie, you mean? What makes you ask?”

“Just a thought.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, since it was obvious that Arty knew little, if anything. To change the subject, he asked, “How’s Beulah?”

“Still off her feed. She don’t look right to me, either. I’ll be keeping her up close, one way and another. There’s bad doings in the swamp just now.”

“Meaning?”

“Found a floater this morning. Young guy not much more than a teenager. Caught on a tree limb at the edge of the main channel. Been dead a couple of days.”

Dead bodies were known as floaters in the lexicon of swamp and river dwellers. Clay asked, “You found him?”

Arty gave a morose nod. “Called Roan, of course. He came out.”

“Drowning victim, I suppose?” Clay felt his stomach muscles clench as he waited for the answer.

“Kilt, or butchered would be more like it. Poor kid had his heart, liver and lights taken, all sliced out clean as a whistle.”

Clay stared at the old man for a grim moment before he asked. “What about his kidneys?”

“Nobody mentioned them parts, but I guess it’s possible. Word is he was a drug-user, needle tracks on his arms and all that. Still, he was just a boy, maybe fifteen or so. God, but don’t it make you pea-green to think of some creep doing such a thing to a young’un with his whole life ahead of him? I mean, it’s bad enough, all them poor, deluded souls over in the Philippines or China selling body parts for a new start in life, but to have somebody just up and take them.” The old man shook his shaggy head so his hat brim flopped. “If somebody’s selling people pieces, there ought to be a law agin it.”

“There is. Traffic in human organs is illegal in the United States, has been for years.” Clay spoke almost
at random as his brain worked on another problem altogether.

“You don’t say.”

“It’s a felony that can cost you up to five years in prison and a fine of fifty thousand dollars.” Clay had come across that particular tidbit a while back when a man offered his kidney for sale on an Internet auction site. Bidding had reached almost six million before being halted by the site owners. Human organs were a valuable commodity.

“Well, thank the good Lord that the law finally got it right for a change.” Arty scratched meditatively at his beard. “But why else would anybody cut up the boy that way?”

“Being illegal doesn’t mean organs aren’t harvested.”

Arty grimaced at the terminology. “Wasn’t there some tale about a college kid during Mardi Gras who partied too hearty down on Bourbon Street and woke up in a hotel bathtub minus a kidney?”

“No connection,” Clay answered. “That one’s an urban legend, one of those grisly rumors that take on a life of their own because they sound so plausible. The removal of a kidney is a complicated process requiring a skilled surgical team and first-rate medical facilities. It’s not something you want to try in a hotel room.”

Arty lifted a bushy gray brow. “That’s only if the guy with the knife cares whether the patient lives or dies, wouldn’t you say?”

“Maybe. But it also assumes that having the kid
ney remain healthy long enough to be transplanted would be a good thing. It wouldn’t last an hour without the special handling found only in a designated hospital setting.”

“So where does that leave this body from the lake? You think somebody snatched the organs at some hospital and dumped the kid here to get rid of him?”

“Makes the most sense that way.”

“Well, damn ’em to hell then,” Arty growled.

Clay agreed completely. It sickened him to think of his swamp being used as a dumping ground. Death came often within its watery precincts, but it was a natural and unpremeditated ending, a part of the life cycle of all living things. It wasn’t obscene and vicious and designed to benefit somebody’s pocketbook. It didn’t pollute the pure, clean air or perpetuate the idea of Louisiana’s wetlands as places of lurid evil.

All the same, Arty’s vehemence struck Clay as unusual. He’d known the old swamp rat for years, respected his knowledge of the place he called home, but had few illusions about him. Arty had never cared two cents for environmental issues and liked animals, in the main, much more than people of any age. He hadn’t been a saint as a young man, from all accounts, and growing older had done little to improve him.

Abruptly Arty said, “Roan asked about you while he was at my place, wanted to know if I’d seen anything of you lately.”

“I suppose you told him no.”

“Had to, didn’t I? Couldn’t have him coming around here upsetting Janna and Lainey.”

“Upsetting?”

“By talking about this boy that was cut to pieces. Janna’s scared enough out here already. Anyway, it’s not the kind of thing you talk about around womenfolk.”

“I hate to break it to you, Arty, my man, but females aren’t like they used to be. I doubt Janna will appreciate being kept in the dark. But that isn’t a big concern at the moment.”

“Meaning?”

“What about me?”

Arty grunted. “You’re all right, ain’t you?”

“For now, but what about later?”

“Later?”

Clay stared at the old man. He was deliberately acting obtuse, he thought. The question was why? Was his concern strictly for Janna and Lainey, or did he have reasons of his own?

Neither answer held much comfort.

H
e was waiting when Janna walked down the steps from the screen porch for a brief stroll to the lake’s edge. She didn’t see him, had no idea he was there until he moved from the darkness into the dim patch of light that fell from inside the house.

“Dr. Gower!” She stood perfectly still, her wide gaze on the physician’s slender yet wiry form, his thinning, precision-cut hair and skin mottled by sun exposure during his favorite sport of bass fishing.

“Why the surprise, my dear?” he inquired with a touch of stringency. “You did contact the office?”

She had, of course; it seemed expedient after her encounter with Clay the night before. Still, her surprise was real. She’d seen the nephrologist and surgical specialist professionally, but never at the camp. It was his nurse, Anita Fenton, who came to take blood samples and pick up the installment payments for the impending surgery. A buxom woman with fading red hair and crooked teeth, Nurse Fenton worshiped the doctor and had apparently been with him for years. Actually trained as a physician’s assistant, she took much of the workload from Dr. Gower’s shoulders so he could spend time on his humanitarian
pursuits like his free clinic for the underprivileged, as well as the transplants. Her extra effort in making house calls was designed to protect Lainey from unnecessary exposure to illness that might jeopardize the transplant operation, and also to prevent multiple office visits that could tip off observers to the clandestine activity carried out behind the medical center’s charitable facade.

“I wasn’t expecting a visit,” Janna said after a moment, “only a return call from you or Nurse Fenton when you found the time.”

“I assumed the situation was urgent or you would not have risked communication. We both know how unwise it is to speak about sensitive matters over a cell phone.”

“I was careful with what I said, I promise. But I needed to let you know that I may have located a relative donor for Lainey.”

“Really.” The doctor did not appear impressed.

“I thought you’d be pleased, since it means we might not have to wait for a cadaver organ.”

“Yes, certainly. It does present problems with security. The fewer people who know about the surgery, the better. You’ve discussed donation with this relative?”

She gave a definite shake of her head. “I thought I should check with your office first. It seemed that you or Nurse Fenton might do a better job of explaining the process and its benefits.”

“Really, Janna.” The surgeon’s voice was pained.

“I’m sorry if you’ve made the trip for nothing. As
I said, I only expected to talk about it with Nurse Fenton.”

“She had other obligations,” he said, his tone distracted. “I decided to combine this visit with a few hours of scouting the lake for the bass tournament this weekend. At least, I suppose that will be held in spite of yesterday’s unpleasantness?”

“Unpleasantness?”

“Some kind of drowning accident. It was on the news.” Dr. Gower waved a narrow hand in a dismissive gesture. “But we seem to have a more important problem here. You have a man inside with you. Who is he, a boyfriend or live-in lover?”

The question was so unexpected that she was thrown off balance. “What?”

“I heard a male voice as I approached the house, so naturally I investigated. The view through the curtain wasn’t the best, but the gentleman appeared quite comfortably installed in your bed.”

Janna stared at Lainey’s doctor. Meticulous in his speech and manners, he always appeared rigorously clean, an excellent quality in his profession. She’d never seen him anything less than formally dressed, and often wondered if he changed to casual wear or got dirty while fishing. He’d been agreeable to Janna in a distant fashion on Lainey’s initial visits, but his primary attention had been for her daughter. Certainly he’d shown little personal curiosity before tonight. Her amazement was in her voice as she said, “You were spying on me.”

“Not at all,” Gower answered, shifting his gaze
away from her. “It was a simple precaution. I needed to know if you were alone. Since you weren’t, I was forced to wait for a chance to speak to you, not the best use of my time.”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t realize…”

“That isn’t the point. May I remind you, my dear, that the instructions you were given to isolate your daughter, abandon contact with family and friends and restrict your movements, were designed to protect us all.”

“I know that.”

“Sexual activity is important to human health. No one understands this better than I do,” he went on with scarcely a pause. “Still, you must control your libido under the present circumstances. I’m afraid that your private life will have to wait.”

“The circumstances have nothing to do with my private life!” Janna declared in rising anger. In fact, she had no private life as this man understood it.

“No, but who you permit to know about our association may be extremely important, since it could jeopardize everything. I thought I had impressed upon you the need to be discreet.”

To reassure him on that point would be easy. All she had to do was open her mouth and tell him that the man inside was the prospective relative donor, and that he was helpless to prevent the removal of a kidney. She couldn’t do it. Something inside her, some reaction to the doctor’s scolding tone, some simple instinct or internal prohibition, prevented the words from forming. Moreover, she wasn’t so sure
Clay was that defenseless. His response was bound to be violent, in spite of his bonds, if Dr. Gower or anyone else came at him with a sedative-filled syringe. It would require at least two people to subdue him for transport to the medical center, and possibly more. Why that hadn’t occurred to her before she didn’t know, since it was so obvious. She hated the idea of witnessing it, much less being a part of it.

Another factor was the doctor’s obvious reluctance to accept a kidney from a source other than the one used by the center. What that meant was unclear. She didn’t know—and wasn’t sure she wanted to know—the exact black market conditions that provided the kidneys he implanted. She suspected that they were obtained from accident victims who had never meant to be organ donors, or perhaps other cadavers in an organ-theft ring based in some big city hospital. Another possibility was that they were taken from living donors, third world citizens desperate enough to exchange a kidney for a ticket to a new life, or drug addicts willing to sell one for the price of a few weeks or months of fixes. Such possibilities haunted her waking hours, and were another reason she’d acted so recklessly where Clay was concerned. He was not only a good candidate for blood and tissue match, but he was obviously healthy so she need have no fear that either he or Lainey would be put at more risk than they could stand. The guilt she must live with over taking a kidney would be the same, but the potential benefits much greater.

Or so she’d thought before the time had actually
come to turn Clay over to Dr. Gower. “The longer we have to wait, Lainey and I, the more risk we all face,” Janna said at last. “That’s one advantage of this relative donor. Arrangements could be made almost immediately instead of depending on location of a compatible cadaver kidney.”

“That’s no longer true.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t come here tonight solely because of your call or even the tournament. I have news, as well, the news you’ve been waiting so long to hear.”

A fatalistic acceptance descended on Janna. “You have a compatible kidney now? It’s ready for Lainey?”

The doctor smiled a little, though he didn’t answer directly. “How is the dear child? Well, I hope? No setbacks, no little illness that might make surgery problematical?”

“Nothing. If you’d like to take a look at her…”

“That won’t be possible under the circumstances.”

“No, of course not.” She put her hand out to touch his arm under the smooth sleeve of his shirt. “I just—you are saying what I think, aren’t you?”

“We’ve been promised a kidney.” Gower’s face softened and he covered her cool fingers with his own.

Maybe this was better. Maybe it would cause fewer problems in the end. “Promised?”

“Soon. Anita will be in touch. That is the good news. The bad news, I’m afraid, is that the price has gone up.”

It was a moment before the last words penetrated. “Gone up? But I made the final payment last week, as agreed.”

“I’m sorry. Anita insists that it’s necessary, and she handles financial matters for me, you know. You have to realize that it’s getting more and more difficult to arrange these things.”

“Yes, but still.”

“Your daughter isn’t my only transplant patient. I do my best to help everyone possible, in spite of heavy expenses—complicated delivery and preservation procedures for the precious kidneys, payoffs, security personnel, that sort of thing. The money must be found to take care of them.”

She believed that he was sincere; it was there in his face and voice. She’d liked Dr. Gower well enough on the occasions when he had seen Lainey, and respected what he was trying to do for those who had nowhere else to turn. She’d often wondered what caused him to set up his transplant facility down near the Projects, whether it was pure altruism as Anita Fenton maintained, or alcohol, drugs, maybe even the lure of huge fees in the form of cash that he didn’t have to share with the IRS. He’d given her a cut-rate price at first because he was drawn to Lainey, she thought. Some of the patients to whom she whispered about such things during Lainey’s legitimate treatments had mentioned sums well over a hundred thousand for the clandestine transplant procedure. No price was too high for her daughter’s life, but Janna wondered now if the low initial price hadn’t been a
fraud, if she wasn’t being manipulated by her own desperation.

As firmly as she was able, she said, “I don’t think I can pay more.”

“You must, for your daughter’s sake. It will be an additional thirty percent.”

Thirty percent.

Thirty percent more. Thirty percent in addition to the amount she’d scraped together by selling nearly everything she owned, borrowing from every institution that would lend her a cent and every person that she knew. Voice flat, she said, “I can’t.”

“I think you can if you try hard enough. You have three days before Anita comes to collect it.”

“Please,” she said, hating the necessity for begging but driven to it. “I really can’t rake up another penny. There’s just no one left to ask.”

“Try your male guest,” Dr. Gower recommended with a slight twist of his lips. “I will be surprised if he refuses you.”

“You don’t know him,” she said tightly, “or the situation.”

“No, but I know you. In his shoes, I’d find it difficult to say no to anything you wanted from me.”

She glanced at the doctor, met his dark gaze that was only an inch above her own. Stillness settled between them, and she had the unwelcome impression that he might be waiting for her to make a different, more personal appeal. The idea was disconcerting. Had it always been there or only surfaced because of the presence of a man in her home, her bed? Had she
been oblivious before in her concentration on Lainey, but was aware now because of the sexual undercurrents between her and Clay? Or was the whole thing a figment of her overwrought imagination?

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, turning her gaze toward the darkly glittering lake.

“Good.” Dr. Gower stepped away from her. “As I said, you’ll be hearing from Anita.”

He moved off quietly into the night. Janna heard the crunch of his footsteps on the gravel driveway that led to the road. Long seconds ticked past, then from some distance away came the sound of a powerful car engine starting. It purred away into the night and all was quiet again.

A shiver ran over Janna and she clasped her arms around her waist. Everything was going wrong, or so it seemed. She wasn’t sure where or how it had begun, but there was no apparent end to it.

Several things today had been odd, as she thought back on them, beginning with Arty’s visit. He hadn’t been his usual, irascibly humorous self. He had avoided her gaze much of the time, and when he couldn’t, she thought she saw condemnation in his watery eyes. He’d visited with Clay far longer than with her or Lainey, and the two men had talked in voices too low to hear. Clay had been silent, almost morose, when the old swamp rat had gone, so that she missed his lazy grin and suggestive banter. On top of that, there had been an unusual amount of activity out on the lake, with the sound of boats zipping up and down the main channel and waves lapping
around the dock like surf. Regardless, Clay had not mentioned the commotion or even seemed to notice it.

Lifting her head, she stared up through the feathery branches of a big cypress at the quarter moon that floated overhead. God, but what was she going to do? This was a judgment on her; to get so close to being able to save Lainey and then have the chance snatched away.

Not for the first time, she wondered if it was really for Lainey’s sake that she was so determined to pursue this illegal transplant surgery. Was it actually her daughter she was trying to save, or was it her own selfish need that was so important, the need to hold on to the only thing that made her life worthwhile? In the end, was she only trying to save herself?

She didn’t know. She really didn’t, and she was too tired from being wrapped up in the day-to-day emergencies of caring for Lainey to work it out. The only thing she knew was that she couldn’t stop. She was in too deep, with too much at stake.

Janna moved back up onto the screen porch. The raccoon Arty had brought for Lainey was curled up in a ball in the corner of its homemade cage. Janna sat down beside him and stroked his soft fur through an opening between the wooden bars. The little critter had turned out to be as tame and mischievous as a kitten. Clay and Lainey had put their heads together and named him Ringo in honor of the stripes that ringed his tail. Janna had misgivings about the germs and infections that might be introduced by such a pet,
but Clay had assured her that she was worrying for nothing. She hoped he was right, since Lainey had grown attached to the fur ball. If the truth were known, even she was developing a fondness for him.