The Wounded Land Read Online Free PDF Page A

was out at the end of your driveway—an old man in an ochre robe. As soon as I saw him, he went into cardiac arrest.” For an instant, a cold hand of doubt touched her heart. He had recovered too easily. Had he staged the whole situation? Impossible! His heart had stopped. “I had to work like hell to save him. Then he just walked away.”
    Covenant’s belligerence collapsed. His gaze clung to her as if he were drowning. His hands gaped in front of him. For the first time, she observed that the last two fingers of his right hand were missing. He wore a wedding band of white gold on what had once been the middlefinger of that hand. His voice was a scraping of pain in his throat. “He’s gone?”
    “Yes.”
    “An old man in an ochre robe?”
    “Yes.”
    “You saved him?” His features were fading into night as the sun dropped below the horizon.
    “Yes.”
    “What did he say?”
    “I already told you.” Her uncertainty made her impatient. “He said, ‘Be true.’ ”
    “He said that to you?”
    “Yes!”
    Covenant’s eyes left her face. “Hellfire.” He sagged as if he carried a weight of cruelty on his back. “Have mercy on me. I can’t bear it.” Turning, he slumped back to the door, opened it. But there he stopped.
    “Why
you?
”
    Then he had reentered his house, the door was closed, and Linden stood alone in the evening as if she had been bereft.
    She did not move until the need to do something, take some kind of action to restore the familiarity of her world, impelled her to her car. Sitting behind the wheel as if she were stunned, she tried to think.
    Why you?
    What kind of question was that? She was a doctor, and the old man had needed help. It was that simple. What was Covenant talking about?
    But
Be true
was not all the old man had said. He had also said,
You will not fail, however he may assail you
.
    He?
Was that a reference to Covenant? Was the old man trying to warn her of something? Or did it imply some other kind of connection between him and the writer? What did they have to do with each other? Or with her?
    Nobody could fake cardiac arrest!
    She took a harsh grip on her scrambled thoughts. The whole; situation made no sense. All she could say for certain was that Covenant had recognized her description of the old man. And Covenant’s mental stability was clearly open to question.
    Clenching the wheel, she started her car, backed up in order to turn around. She was convinced now that Covenant’s problem was serious; but that conviction only made her more angry at Dr. Berenford’s refusal to tell her what the problem was. The dirt road was obscure in the twilight; she slapped on her headlights as she put the sedan in gear to complete her turn.
    A scream like a mouthful of broken glass snatched her to a halt. It pierced the mutter of her sedan. Slivers of sound cut at her hearing. A woman screaming in agony or madness.
    It had come from Covenant’s house.
    In an instant, Linden stood beside the car, waiting for the cry to be repeated.
    She heard nothing. Lights shone from some of the windows; but no shadows moved. No sounds of violence betrayed the night. She I stood poised to race to the house. Her ears searched the air. But the dark held its breath. The scream did not come again.
    For a long moment, indecision held her. Confront Covenant—demand answers? Or leave? She had met his hostility. What right did she have—?Every right, if he were torturing some woman. But how could she be sure? Dr. Berenford had called it a medical problem.
    Dr. Berenford—
    Spitting curses, she jumped back into her car, stamped down on the accelerator, and sped away in a rattle of dust and gravel.
    Two minutes later, she was back in town. But then she had to slow down so that she could watch for street signs.
    When she arrived at the Chief of Staff’s house, all she could see was an outline against the night sky. Its front frowned as if this, too, were a place where secrets were kept. But she did not