After he’d helped her into bed, he touched her cheek. “I need to talk to the police. The house is locked, and Temple’s upstairs. Your cell is by your bed. I won’t be gone long.”

She wanted to tell him she could take care of herself, but that was so blatantly untrue that she said nothing. Viper, despite all her tough girl posturing, had proved to be completely helpless.

Later she awoke to the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. She looked at the clock. It was four-thirty. He’d been gone almost two hours. She flinched as she tried to find a more comfortable position, but her ribs were tender, her neck stiff, her back sore. None of that hurt as much as thinking about what Panda had endured as a child.

She eventually gave up trying to fall back to sleep and got out of bed. He’d done a good job bandaging her foot, and putting her weight on it barely hurt. She made her way to the sunroom, where she curled up on the couch.

As the light leaked over the horizon, she turned her thoughts from Panda to her own foolishness—the last thing she wanted to examine. But last night’s ugly experience had ripped away the veil of her self-deception and shown her the absurdity of the false identity she’d created for herself. What a joke—that hard-boiled swagger and pugnacious attitude. She’d never felt more like a fool—the biggest phony on the island. When it had come to protecting herself, she’d failed abysmally. Instead she’d been a helpless, frantic mess who had to be rescued by a man. The truth tasted bitter in her mouth.

She found her yellow pad. After a few false starts, she wrote a brief note. She owed him that—and so much more. She tossed a few things into her backpack and, as the sun came up, made her way through the woods.

Her sneakers were soaked with dew by the time she reached the cottage just as Bree was emerging from the honey house. Bree’s hair was uncombed, her clothes rumpled, her sticky hands held far away from her body. But her gasp of alarm indicated that Lucy looked a lot worse.

Lucy slipped her backpack off her shoulder. “Could I stay here for a while?”

“Of course you can.” She paused. “Come inside. I’ll make coffee.”

LATER THAT MORNING, WHILE BREE was at the farm stand, Lucy went into the bathroom and cut the dreads from her hair. Standing naked on the white tile floor, she worked at her tattoos with a combination of rubbing alcohol and baby oil. Finally the last remnants were gone.

Chapter Twenty-one

PANDA CRUMPLED THE NOTE SHE’D written and tossed it in the trash, but throwing the damned thing away didn’t erase it from his mind.