“I’ll be in your downstairs bathroom.” She smiled back at him. “And, thanks, but I won’t need you.”
Owen kept his mouth shut as she went inside, but Doyle called to her, “Damn thing could get infected.” He didn’t wait for an answer and growled at Owen. “You understand the position I’m in? And Katie’s not here. I’ve got all this on my plate…” He bit off a sigh and shut up. “Bring the boys by here anytime.”
“And what, let someone hack at them with a saw?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Maybe not.” Doyle didn’t meet his eye. “I wish I knew what Mattie was up to. And Abigail. Hell. I can’t get my head around what all’s going on here. I’m hoping nothing. That when it’s all done and said, it’s just a bunch of nothing.”
Something banged inside in the bathroom. “Damn!”
Doyle glanced at Owen and smiled. “Sounds as if our detective needs some help, after all. I’ll leave you to it.”
“Chicken,” Owen said, and headed inside.
Abigail picked herself up off the bathroom floor and got out of there, leaning against the pineboard wall in the hall just as Owen arrived, steady, not at all panicked.
“All set,” she said. “I lost my balance and had a little spill.”
“Going through my bathroom cupboards?”
“Your shelves, actually. There must be five million of them in there. I checked them all for ibuprofen. I got up on the edge of the tub to see into the high ones.” She could feel her heart thumping rapidly from the near-disaster. “But no ibuprofen. And there’s none in the first-aid kit.”
“It’s in the kitchen.”
She noticed him glance down at her leg and was grateful that she’d had the good sense to put her pants back on before pawing through his shelves. She’d stood there, in the middle of his bathroom, pants in hand, and considered the matter—pictured herself falling, and him charging to her rescue, only to find her in her skivvies, writhing on the floor. Unfortunately, her premonition hadn’t compelled her to skip climbing onto the edge of the tub altogether.
“My leg’s fine,” she said. “Honestly.”
“All patched up?”
“I found a proper bandage that I could manage on my own. All I need now are a couple of ibuprofen, a glass of wine and a hot bath.”
Owen moved closer to her. “All can be arranged.”
He was close enough that Abigail could see the black flecks in his fog-gray eyes. She pressed the small of her back against the wall. If she could do magic, she’d make herself melt into the pine boards. The man was messing up her head.
He studied her with that mix of steadiness and intensity that, in him, weren’t at all contradictory. “Doyle’s gone.”
“Arresting Mattie won’t be easy for him, if it comes to it.”
“Would it be easy for you?”
“No. It wouldn’t have been for Chris, either. The three of them—” She pulled herself slightly away from the wall, her heart rate adjusting to the jolt of her fall. “They grew up like brothers. I could see that when I first came to Mt. Desert. I didn’t understand the push-pull Chris felt about his life here until I met Doyle and Mattie.”
“If Mattie has an explanation for why he was in your house, why he attacked you—”
“He’ll have an explanation. He always does, doesn’t he?”
“Will you press charges?”
“It’s not that simple.” She thought of the two pictures the Alden boys had found on Owen’s deck. “Doyle wasn’t on the lobster boat the day you lost your sister, was he?”
“No. I don’t know where he was. Abigail—”
“He’d have been fifteen. It must have been an awful time for him, too.”
“I’m sure it was. He, Mattie and Chris were all friends. Abigail, what do you want to do? Do you want to go look for Mattie? Because I can go with you. We can take my truck.”
She banged her head back against the wall. “Sure. Yeah, we can go look. It beats climbing around in your bathroom and driving myself nuts trying to put all these disparate pieces together. But we won’t find him, not if he’s squirreled himself away somewhere and doesn’t want to be found.”
Owen traced a crooked finger along her jaw. “You’re worried about him, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Crazy, I know. The bastard jumps me, cuts my best pair of hiking pants—okay, so my only pair of hiking pants—and humiliates me in front of a bunch of Maine cops, not to mention two very serious FBI agents—” She blinked back totally unexpected tears. “And I’m worried about him. Damn.”
“Your father…”
“No cell service out here on the rocks and Mattie cut my phone line.” She smiled through her tears. “There you go—maybe he cut the line just to keep me from having to talk to my father. He was doing me a favor.”
“Is the line fixed now?”
She nodded. “One of Lou’s guys knew what to do. I’m not good with wires.”
Owen let his finger trail up her cheek and catch a tear, then kissed the spot where it had been. “I hate to see you cry.”