Tide Will Tell (Islands of Intrigue: San Juans) (20 page)

“She’d tell them everything she knew about Joe Malone’s shady operation and that would be it. Johnson admitted he wouldn’t pursue prosecuting her as an accessory.”

Josh let out a long breath and picked up the picture of innocent teenage Kate. He had to explain all this to her, and pray that she wouldn’t be too angry at him for prying into her personal life.

He had about a hundred more questions flying around in his head, but before he could flag one down, his cell phone rang. Seeing a number that didn’t look familiar, he sent Eli a do-you-mind look, and clicked ‘accept’.

“Josh Collins? This is Mark Hughes from Homegrown Productions.”

All Josh’s nerves were instantly on alert. Homegrown was one of the hottest documentary production companies in the country. Was this call for real?

He tried not to let his voice shake. “What can I do for you?

“I’m looking to hire an assistant director for a doc we’re filming this summer. It’s about an artist who does all his paintings on the walls of caves. Then he photographs them and sells the prints. You heard of the guy?”

Josh’s head was still spinning.
Had he?
“Uh…no, I don’t think so…”

“He’s one of those crazy people who live on the fringes. Perfect subject for a doc. Anyway, I got your name from one of your profs at the U who thought you’d be a great addition to our team. We’re in production for six weeks and post-prod for another six after that. I’d need you up in Vancouver in a couple of days. Are you interested?”

Was he interested? Was he
dreaming?
This was the kind of call he hoped he’d get after logging a few more years of school, but who was he to question the judgment of one of his profs?

He started to say an enthusiastic but composed “yes”, as if he got this kind of offer all the time, then stopped himself.

Kate.
He couldn’t take this job because it would mean abandoning her. What was he supposed to do?

He rubbed his temple, and Eli sent him a questioning look.

Josh cleared his throat. “I’m really interested, but can I take a little time to see if I can rearrange my schedule?”

“I know it’s short notice.” The man sounded understanding, but businesslike. “Go ahead and think it over, but I’d like an answer by the end of the day tomorrow.”

Tomorrow.
Monday.
That shortened his timeframe for proving to Kate that she shouldn’t walk down the aisle on Saturday.

Mark went on. “Why don’t you take the details and get back to me as soon as you know.”

Josh reached for the yellow paper that held Eli’s notes and flipped it over. He wrote quickly as Mark elaborated. After ending the call, he gave Eli the news.

“Great.” Eli looked pleased. “So, you’re taking it, right?”

Was he?
Josh tapped his phone on the table and looked at the photo of young Kate. No way could he just bail on her.

This would require not only serious thought, but serious prayer. One way or the other, he had to return to Shaw Island for the things he’d left there, but it would be good to talk to her about it now.

Not to mention that he wouldn’t mind saying goodnight to her.

He scrolled for her number and prayed for the right words.

Chapter 21

Kate paused, allowing Sam’s unanswered question to hover in the air between them. She wasn’t marrying Chase just for his money. The fact that he was a hard worker with a soft heart only added to her reasons for loving him.

As she opened her mouth to speak, the muffled sound of her eerie sci-fi ringtone stopped her, and she glanced around for her purse.

“It’s here.” Extending her arm, Sam retrieved the bag from the end of the sofa.

“Thanks.” Kate fished for her phone, reminding herself that if everything went as planned, she’d have to change that ring to something more befitting the wife of a successful businessman. Something by Bach or Beethoven, maybe.

Expecting to see Chase’s name on the screen, she frowned. The call she’d just missed had been from Josh.

“Was that Chase?” Sam swirled what was left of her coffee, apparently deciding whether to finish it.

“No.” Kate slipped the phone back into her purse, which she then tossed onto the floor, making a mental note to check for a message later on. “Just Josh.”

“Oh,” Sam nodded. “So, you were about to answer my question.”

“Right.” Kate stretched out her leg. As much as she wanted to defend her own motives, she
had
needed certain resources to ensure her safety, and Chase had offered them to her. While she really didn’t owe anybody any explanations, Sam had been kind enough to give her the reassurance she’d needed. The least she could do was to give her some reassurance in return.

But how much did she dare tell her?

“I do love Chase.” She looked at Sam. “But there
is
more to it.” She pulled in a breath. “I think I’m in danger because of something stupid I did.”

“Danger?” Sam leveled a look of concern. “What kind of danger?”

Still collecting her thoughts, Kate peered out the door at the cozy outside deck. The sky had darkened to a vivid cobalt and the thought of fresh air appealed. “Do you mind if we sit outside for a bit?”

Sam stood. “That’s a good idea.”

As they stepped through the glass door, the cool air felt refreshing against Kate’s cheeks. Sam flipped a switch, and pools of soft golden light washed the deck, which was almost as big as the salon inside. A hot tub, with a bar rimming one edge of it, stood at the center, and various kinds of seating surrounded it. On the far end, two sets of batwing gates opened to stairs leading down to the lower level swim platform. Kate recalled coming up that way earlier after Sam had tied the dinghy to the back of the boat.

Sam flicked another switch, illuminating the orange glow of a couple of heat lamps which flanked a long white sofa. As Kate sat, Sam looked over the railing at the swim platform. “I thought I heard someone.”

“Someone?”

She shook her head. “It’s no one.” She eased down onto the sofa. “I’m just half-expecting Stuart to come paddling out on his kayak.”

“He’s still upset?”

“He just has some things to work through.”

“Oh.” Settling into the soft cushions, Kate let her gaze drift over to the hot tub, with its neatly folded white towels and a champagne bottle in a shiny silver bucket gracing its edge. This really was the life.

She took a deep breath and began. “I came from a pretty bad family situation and I left home before I graduated high school. I wound up in San Diego with no money and no job skills. I answered an ad to be a customer service rep for a clinic, and it was kind of a lifesaver. See, a bunch of us were in the same boat, down and out or runaways. The guy who ran the company—his name was Joe….” A shiver ran up her spine when she said his name. “He had a condo and let anybody who needed a place to live move in. It wasn’t exactly ‘home’, but it was a place to sleep. Sounds pretty dismal, right?”

Sympathy brimmed in Sam’s eyes. “Go on.”

“So the job turned out to be a sales job. Some of the people who had been there longer tracked down names and contact information for people who were critically ill. Then they’d send us out to talk to them about the clinic. We’d make fifty bucks for every person we convinced to come in to experience a healing.”

“A ‘healing’?” Crinkles formed on Sam’s brow. “What kind of healing?”

“I didn’t really know at first. Just that Joe had all kinds of people saying they’d been cured of various things. Like it was some kind of miracle.”

“Uh huh.” Sam sounded skeptical. “Go on.”

“So after a while, I realized that Joe was making a bundle of money, but I didn’t really question it because it was keeping me off the street.”

Sam raised a disapproving eyebrow. “It sounds like a tenuous situation.”

“It was. But I had a small group of friends I could count on. Shari and Ben, and Iowa. We called her that because she hardly ever talked and no one knew her name. All we could get out of her was where she was from, so that’s what we called her.” Kate smiled at the memory. “But my favorite was a boy named Dakota. That really was his name, not where he was from.” A lump formed in her throat. “He was just a kid—only fifteen when he first got there.”

“Fifteen? You mean this man employed children?”

“He kind of looked the other way, I suppose. Anyway, Dakota’s seventeen now, but he still seems so young. He has Downs Syndrome, and he really needs looking out for. I kind of took him under my wing.”

Sam pulled her legs under herself, clearly getting involved in the story. “Did he do the same job as you?”

“Yes, and he was great at it. He’ll talk to anyone, and he’s a hard worker. Plus, Joe had him telling people a story about how he couldn’t walk or even speak until Joe healed him.”

“Was that true?”

“No, but people believed him. He’s so sweet, I don’t think it registered to him as a lie.” Kate pulled her good leg up, mirroring Sam’s position as best she could. “Anyway, after I had been there for a while, Joe offered me a promotion to office assistant. I was thrilled not to have to solicit patients anymore, and it was kind of exciting. I was let in on all the inner workings of the clinic, and I finally got to witness actual healings.”

“So, what happened in these ‘healings’?”

“Well, they took place in the room Joe called the ‘Operating Theatre’. It looked just like an operating room, but he had a place along one wall where a small audience could observe. It was my job to help guide the audience members in and tell them what to expect. I also made sure they knew the rules.”

“Rules?”

“Like to stay in their seats and to not cross the line on the floor. Joe didn’t want anybody to get too close to him while he was working on the patient.”

Sam shuddered. “That sounds ominous.”

Kate expelled a jittery breath, hating the memory of this part. “It was weird, but people who are sick or have sick loved ones want so badly to believe in miracles, that maybe it didn’t seem so strange to them. The patient would be all prepped on a table with a sheet covering them. Then Joe would come in wearing surgeon’s scrubs, complete with mask and the whole bit. He’d pull back the sheet to uncover whatever area of the person’s body was most impacted by their illness.” She clasped her hands to keep them from shaking.

“Then he’d take a small knife, like a surgeon’s scalpel, I guess, and he’d cut into them. You knew he was really cutting because blood would…” She had to pause to subdue the memory and its accompanying emotion. “Blood would spurt out. Then he’d reach into the person’s body and pull out the thing that was making them sick. It always looked like a tumor or something. Then he’d rub his hand over the incision and say some kind of chant and the incision would heal. It was weird, like I said, but he really convinced people that he had some kind of healing power.”

Disgust rolled across Sam’s face. “And you believed it?”

“I really wanted to. It was all a little weird and cult-like, but it was a job and I liked my friends. Plus all the patients seemed to think they were either cured or at least better after their healing, so there was every reason to believe it was real.”

An image of Mr. Hingston clung to her as fresh as the day he’d visited the clinic. Kate brushed back a tear. Karen had tried to talk him out of it, right up until he’d gone in for pre-op. She was the only family he had and since she hadn’t wanted to watch, there had been no audience for that surgery.

Mr. Hingston was such a sweet man, and he’d been so certain that the healing was going to cure his cancer.

It hadn’t.

A wave of sadness washed over her. “Then it got a little scary towards the end.”

Sam rubbed her upper arms. “What happened?”

“Well…. One day I walked across the parking lot to get a sandwich at the mini-mart. A man walked up and started threatening me.”

“Threatening? What did he say?”

“He asked if I worked for Joe Malone and I said yes. Then he said he was a detective and that if I didn’t do everything he told me to do, he’d arrest me.”

Sam frowned. “On what grounds?”

“Well, he told me that Joe was perpetrating a scam and that I would be charged as an accomplice if I didn’t help to gather evidence against him.”

“What kind of evidence?”

“He said that what Joe did wasn’t real surgery, but that it’s a sleight of hand, and he wanted me to get close enough to take a video. I was so scared of this detective, and of going to jail. I mean, he really had me terrified.”

“I can understand that.”

“That afternoon, I cut a little hole in the pocket of my lab coat so you couldn’t tell I had the camera in it. I was so scared when Joe started the healing. It was dark in the room except for the bright lights shining right on Joe and the patient. I eased closer and closer to that line. I hoped he wouldn’t notice, but he kept glancing over at me.”

“Kate, that must have been so frightening.”

“It was. Finally, I was standing right on the line but I still couldn’t get a good view of his hands. So I took a big step, and he kind of jerked his arm up and looked at me. A thing that looked like a kidney fell out of his sleeve and splatted on the floor, and the audience gasped. It was really awful. Joe did his best to try to save the performance, but it wasn’t very convincing. To make matters worse, I knew I hadn’t gotten anything on video.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, after the surgery, Joe wanted me to go into his office and talk to him in private. I reminded him I had to get to the bank before it closed because I always took the day’s money in to deposit. Joe only let people pay in cash so there was always a lot of it. I took the money pouch out of the safe and shoved it in my backpack like I always did. Joe said we’d talk as soon as I came back, and he went into his office.”

She stopped and took a deep breath. She couldn’t admit that Karen Hingston had picked that moment to storm into the clinic, furious that her father had died that morning.

What happened after that was the
real
reason Kate had run. Would the story still make sense if she skipped ahead?