Helen cried "Barry, get down!"

Barry didn't listen, he was too busy waving his bottle and yelling. When he dropped his bottle on Dead Man's Curve, it dropped down on Ray. The contents splashed over him and Ray yelled in protest, turning around for just a few seconds. But that was long enough.

"Oh my God" Julie moaned, turning to Helen as Barry staggered up behind them. A body was lying in the ditch, a motionless form shapeless in fishing clothes and a single black rubber boot. Ray crouched by the body, and turned to the others.

"He's dead," Ray said.

At his words, Helen felt the personality she'd worn for the past two years like her most comfortable pair of shoes fall away, leaving the personality that was used to danger, to emergencies and to dealing with horrible things.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Of course I'm not sure!" Ray yelled back at her.

"Need some help?"

The four of them whirled as the voice came from up the cliff. A dark figure plummeted down, landing on the road.

"What are you doing here?" Helen snarled, her voice savage. Julie and Ray couldn't help but stare at her, even now; the change was that startling.

The figure stood and walked towards them, resolving into a young man of about twenty wearing black jeans, a white undershirt and a black leather jacket. Tall, dark and strikingly handsome, he walked slowly and steadily, his eyes locked on Helen.

"So this is what you did that summer, two years ago. You moved here," he said to her.

"Yeah, I did," Helen replied, her voice hard.

Barry saw the way the stranger was looking at his girlfriend and asked, his voice aggressive, "Who are you?"

"Let's just say, he's a friend" Helen told him, her voice odd.

"We don't need friends right now, we have bigger problems" Ray cried.

"I think we need this one" Helen told Ray. She looked at the stranger and in a voice that was strangely calm and cold, continued "You're the one with the expertise in getting rid of dead bodies, what do you suggest?"

Julie's head was whirling. First the man on the road, then this stranger who Helen seemed to know coming out of nowhere-and what was happening to Helen? She said "Helen, I don't understand-"

"You don't need to, Julie." Helen told her gently. "You just need to let me save our futures."

Barry got it immediately, and shouted at Julie and Ray, standing there shell shocked, "What do you think's going to happen to us if he's dead? We're ruined, that's what! Even if we get out of this without jail time, do you think that you'll still have your scholarship, Miss Future Lawyer?"

That Julie understood, and she asked "Helen, who is this guy? How's he going to help us?"

Helen watched, arms crossed under her breasts, as the stranger walked towards her. "Well, you heard Julie" she told him.

The stranger walked to the body in the ditch, and crouched down beside it. He moved the man's face towards him, and his voice was strangely offhand as he told them "He's not dead."

"So we call the hospital" Ray said.

"We can't do that, if he dies in hospital, nothing changes!" Barry yelled.

The stranger was still crouched by the body. Julie looked at him just in time to see him touch a cut on the body's forehead, then bring the bloodied finger to his mouth. Too shocked to even wonder, she just watched wordlessly as he repeated the action, this time skimming his thumb down a dark streak on the black rubber boot.

Ray caught the stranger standing out of the corner of his eye and turned to see him frown, then look at Barry.

"Hey, jockstrap boy."

"What did you call me?" Barry asked scowling, his well-known temper starting to boil.

"Stop provoking him. If you don't want to help, then leave" Helen told the stranger, her voice warm with anger.

The stranger touched one of the bloody marks on Barry's face, and asked "Is this your blood?"

"No" Helen answered for him.

The stranger licked the blood off his finger, and his facial expression changed to mild interest.

"It's not his either."

"What do you mean?" Julie asked.

"The only visible injuries that guy" and the stranger indicated the body in the ditch with a tilt of his head "has are on his face. It's not the same blood as on his trousers and boot. And if it's not from any of you-"

"Then whose is it?" Ray asked.

Part two is here.

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