Flashback by Nevada Barr Page A

there."
    Anna hadn't taken time to assess herself, but she did so now. Like Linda, her dive skin was torn in dozens of places. Blood mixed with water was staining the deck around her feet. When she breathed, her ribs hurt-probably not broken but badly bruised. There might be other injuries not so readily apparent.
    "Good point," she finally agreed. "Teddy might not take kindly to having to save my life more than once a day."
    "I'll go down in half an hour or so," Cliff promised. "Let the dust settle a bit."
    Anna thought for a second and was pleased to note that her ability to reason seemed to have returned. "Okay," she said. "You stay here, Mack. Dive with Cliff. Stay clear of the wreck if anything looks like it could turn on you. I'll leave my gear and the camera." It occurred to her then that the camera had been with Linda. She looked at the other diver, naked now but for the bottom of her two-piece bathing suit. The top lay in pieces on the deck. Ugly scrapes raked across her left breast.
    Linda pawed through the refuse of her gear and held it up. "Can't promise it'll still work."
    "Bob-" Teddy began.
    Anna overrode her. "Daniel, take the Curious and continue the search. Teddy, me and Linda will go back to the fort, get patched up, then join you."
    With a minimum of fuss, they divided themselves among the boats and, Teddy driving. the women motored back to Garden Key.
    The more time that passed, the more Anna's body made its complaints heard. By the time they docked, she had stiffened up and was hard pressed to find any part of her that did not ache.
    Linda looked just as miserable. "Why don't you lay low for a while," Anna suggested. "Teddy'll do the driving. I'll sit still and look." That would be about all she could do, but Anna chose not to put it into words.
    Ever practical, Linda accepted.
    Anna showered quickly. Naked, she could see the toll coral and trauma had taken. She'd sustained no deep cuts as Linda had, but contusions, burning and itching from the coral's defensive toxins, marked her so that she looked as if she suffered from some vile and highly contagious disease.
    Choosing comfort, she set aside the National Park Service's uniform code and donned another short loose dress. She wanted as little touching her skin as park rules and regulations would allow.
    She made herself a peanut butter sandwich, poured a glass of sparkling water that tasted flat though she'd just opened it, and sat on the couch next to a sleeping Piedmont to eat. The coffee table was strewn with Great-Great-Aunt Raffia's correspondence to her sister Peggy. Perhaps because of the dreams she'd had the night before or the moments without oxygen when she'd hovered above the western ramparts watching the last letter she'd read come to life, Anna felt a connection to Raffia and Tilly that was more than family ties. The fear that touched her onboard the Curious when her mind took her back to the beckoning finger again rubbed at the edges of her mind.
    "I feel funny," she said to the cat. "My mind isn't working right." The admission, spoken aloud even to a sleeping cat, disturbed her. This was not the kind of thing she wanted to become public knowledge.
    "It'll pass," she said to the imaginary jury in her head. Leaving the sandwich half-eaten, she grabbed a daypack she'd stuffed with needful things and left the cat to his nap.
    Anna'd been raised on cowboy-and-Indian stories. At least conceptually she was no stranger to the phrase "skinned alive." Having been rudely scraped over the coral, she suffered a new and deeper understanding of the old torture. It hurt to walk. The dress chafed. The sun poked red-hot rays into her. Because they were abraded by living coral, the wounds itched. Scratching them was brutal. The only good thing she could say about the contusions, had she been mad enough to want to play the Pollyanna Glad Game, was they took her mind off the aches the tumbling had engendered, the nausea from swallowing salt water and the