“How did you meet him?”
“I was on a shoot in Palm Springs seven or eight years back.He’d just outfitted a new resort there.We played golf together.Still do, sometimes.”
She gave him a wry smile.“Golf.Who’d’a guessed?”He gave another of his negligent shrugs.
This time the gesture drew her eyes to his shoulder and she was reminded of the punishment he had suffered.Her smile faded fast.“Johnbeatyou?”
Cutter was silent for so long that she wondered if he was retracting his story.Her hopes had barely risen, though, when he said with quiet purpose, “Had me beaten, then tore my back raw with a belt he borrowed from his biker friend.”
“John doesn’t have biker friends.”
“Change ‘friend’ to ‘lackey.’I’m sure he was hired, then paid well to forget what he’d done and seen.And to dispose of the belt.”
Still Hillary resisted.“Timiny Cove is a small place.Someone would have known.”
“In the middle of winter?The snow fell for three days.It was a while after that before anyone moved far, and anyway, the gem pits were closed for the winter.We were just sifting, sorting, and matching.Work was sporadic.”
“But no one called?”It seemed bizarre.“No one came looking for you?”
“The phone line had been cut.By the time anyone came looking—if anyone did, which I doubt, since I didn’t have that kind of relationship with the guys—I was gone.”
“Two weeks after the beating,” she said skeptically.
“That’s right.”
“And you showed up at my door looking hale and hardy.”
“Did I?”
Thinking back, she recalled that he had looked unsettled.At the time, she assumed he was overwhelmed by New York City.“You were standing straight.”
“I was stiff.My ribs were still hurting, and my back was scabbed over.”
Feeling vaguely ill, she tipped the glass to her lips with far less finesse than Cutter affected.“You stayed at my place for a week,” she said.“If you’d been suffering, I would have known it.”
“How?”
“You’d have moved funny.”
“I didn’t move much.I slept.”
He was right, she realized, but still she insisted, “I’d have known it.”
“Did I show you my back?”
“No.”
“Did I ever walk around without a shirt?”
“No.”She grew quiet.“I thought you were modest.”Something struck her then.“If your back was all mangled and scarred, how could you do the work you did?”
“I had the face they wanted.The look.”He came close enough for their sides to meet, and his voice softened.“Touch my back.”
She eyed him questioningly.
“Go on,” he coaxed.“Run your palm over it.”He waited until she raised her hand.“No, not over the jacket.Slip it inside.That’s it.Now move your hand.More.What do you feel?”
She swallowed.“Texture.”And she knew it wasn’t his shirt, since that was of finely pressed silk.The flesh beneath the silk felt rutted, the way the ground used to be in Timiny Cove at the end of mud season.