Cloaked in Malice by Annette Blair Page A

hooked on your girl.”
    “I knew that. I hoped you might be his cure.”
    “Sorry,” she said, “hick or not, I want somebody who sees only me , not the girl beside me.”
    I went shoulder to shoulder with her. “And that’s what we’ll find you. What’d you think of the paramedics who showed up the other day? Either of them do it for you?”
    There came Paisley’s dimple again. “Get a clue, Mad. Half the town’s hooked on you .”
    Nick groaned. “Okay. We get it. We’ll find fresh meat for you.” He got up, started the boat, and we continued toward the small island ahead of us, the waterspout behind us completely dissipated.
    Discussing the qualities Paisley wanted in a man ate up the distance, and we were docking in no time.
    “Geez,” she said, crossing the dock, “I can’t believe I never came across the dock when I was walking on the beach. I didn’t know about this route from the house. But we’ll find it. Follow me.”
    We walked up a dirt road behind her until she stopped and we caught up to her.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked.
    She pointed to a small shack, sort of leaning to one side, boards not quite tight, about as big as a studio apartment, a small one.
    “What about it?” Nick asked.
    I remembered the vision of the old man taking off my cloak in a small shack, where I could see snow between the slats. “Do you know this place?” I asked Paisley.
    “I shouldn’t. I’ve never seen it before.” But as she said it, she pushed open the door with a hard squeal.
    “Be careful, the floor might be rotten,” Nick warned.
    Paisley went in anyway. I followed her and recognized the interior, the fireplace, the kitchen table and mismatched chairs. An old bureau, two small beds, headboards meeting in the corner. Oddly enough, still impeccably clean.
    But most prominent, in fact, though not in my vision, I noted the high side-by-side windows, their bright paisley curtains, contrasting remarkably with splashes of soft blue sky. Paisley Skye.
    If her name was, indeed, fake, this could be where she received it.
    Paisley walked slowly across the floor, testing every squeaky floorboard, as if they were sounds she made on purpose, memories like old friends. She bent to a maple bureau with wide, nautically carved drawer pulls. She stooped to the bottom drawer, opened it, and took out a man’s blue flannel shirt.
    She carefully unfolded it to reveal a small art brass trinket box. When she opened that, she sighed, pulled something out, regarded it, and turned to me. Then she dangled it by a chain, a half heart. An expensive love token. The opposite half of the heart inside the muff. This one with the name “Rose” engraved on it.
    I opened my hand and caught it, like our moves had been choreographed.
    Still without speaking, still clutching the flannel shirt, Paisley stepped out the back door and went straight to a lumpy, homemade gravestone. “Bepah.” She read the name engraved by a finger in wet cement out loud. She raised the shirt to her face, inhaled, clutched it to her heart, turned, and walked into my arms, the shirt between us.
    Her sobs about broke me. I knew that the shirt and thegrave belonged to the man with the missing finger, the man who probably did protect her with his last breath. Certainly not a man she’d blocked entirely, which happened to be my last coherent thought as Madeira Cutler.
    Wearing a blue flannel shirt, I spun through decades on a fast-moving run through a forest, wood snapping and living night sounds clicking in my ears. Leaves and tree limbs slapped me in the face. Earth scents beckoned, dirt, broken foliage, the slime and call of tree frogs. I ran through a mass of lightning bugs and caught one in my throat.
    I had stopped to gag it out when I heard the barking dogs, loud, hungry, and hot on my heels.
    From a tree limb above me, something landed on my back, rolled me over, hovered with a growl of satisfaction, and held a knife to my neck. A caveman, all hair, no