by Linda Howard
The bottom dropped out of her stomach. What he was wearing told her louder than words that he intended to go after the men who were shooting at them. She released Gena and stood up, galvanized by the sheer, icy terror that seized her. She wanted to scream; she wanted to tackle him and tie him up so he couldn’t go. She refused to let him do this; she couldn’t watch him walk away knowing there was a strong possibility he wouldn’t come back—
His gaze snagged hers. She saw him take in her white, strained expression. Carefully he stood both weapons in a safe place where they couldn’t be knocked over and then threaded his way across the crowded, cluttered room to her side. People spoke to him, patted him on the shoulder, and he nodded and spoke and traded greetings, but he never paused, never wavered from his course.
When he reached her, he touched her hand and said, “Are you okay?”
She felt as if she would choke if she tried to utter a word. She gave a fierce, single shake of her head.
He looked around, saw there was no privacy to be had for even a moment. “Follow me.”
Numbly she did, scarcely aware of anything around her as she trailed in his wake, seeing nothing but his back. He led her outside, into the warm sunshine, but stopped while they were still protected by the downward curve of the land. Turning to study her with his pale, steady gaze, he said, “What’s wrong?”
What was wrong? “Your clothes,” she blurted, unable to formulate a more coherent reason.
Bewildered, he looked down at himself. “My clothes?”
“You’re going after them, aren’t you?”
Understanding dawned. “We can’t just sit here,” he said quietly. “Someone has to do something.”
“But not you! Why does it have to be you?”
“I don’t know who else it would be. Look around you. Mario was the youngest man, and he’s dead. Josh could have done it, but he’s got a cracked bone in his leg. Everyone else is older and out of shape. I’m the logical choice.”
“Screw logic!” she said fiercely, grabbing his shirt with both hands. “I know I don’t have the right to say anything because we aren’t—we haven’t—” She shook her head, fighting a sudden rush of tears. “I can’t lose…not again—”
He stopped her incoherent babble by dipping his head and putting his mouth on hers.
His lips were soft, so soft. The kiss was gentle, questing. His lips moved against hers, learning and asking, and she tilted her head up to answer.
“You have the right,” he murmured, and framed her face with his hands, his fingers sliding into her hair as he took her with a series of tender, hungry kisses, as if he were eating her mouth. She gripped his forearms, digging her fingers into the hard muscles and tendons, holding on for dear life as she sagged against him. His tongue made leisurely forays, touched and stroked and enticed as though he had all the time in the world and couldn’t think of a better way to spend it.
She had never before been kissed so…contentedly.
He was aroused; she could feel the hard bulk of his penis against her. She expected to feel his hips move, but he remained still except for his tongue and those soft, soft lips. Warmth glowed to life within her, pushing away her fear, her anger that he would take such a risk when they were hovering on the verge of something that felt so wonderful she could scarcely believe it.
Leaving her mouth, he pressed kisses on her cheek, her temple, her eyes, then went back to her lips for more.
If he made love as leisurely as he kissed—oh, dear God.
“We should go back inside,” he whispered against her mouth, then rested his forehead against hers. “I have a lot to do.”
She pulled back and looked into his blue eyes. They were as calm as always, but now she recognized the steel core of this man. He wasn’t dramatic; he wasn’t someone who demanded attention—because he didn’t need it. He was supremely certain of himself and his capabilities. He would risk his life for them without a moment’s hesitation.
She would have stayed out there and argued until they were both drawing their social security checks, but he turned her and somehow herded her back into the basement. A lot of smiling, knowing looks were directed their way, but that wasn’t a surprise, considering how he’d acted last night, and that they’d just now been kissing outside the door. What did surprise her was that no one, absolutely no one, seemed surprised. Apparently, she was the only one who was having trouble coming up to speed on this, but then, she was the only one who had deliberately worn blinders.
In the irritating way that most men seemed to have, he’d already reverted completely to business mode, gathering with Creed and the other men. Creed even had a notebook and was mapping out something with swift strokes of a pen. Everyone crowded around to hear what was being said.
“The bridge is out,” Cal was saying. “That was the explosion. The electricity went out right before that, which means they cut the wires. The phones are out, too. From the way the shooters have positioned themselves, their intention is to keep anyone from going for help through the cut in the mountains. They wanted to cut us off and hem us in.”
“But why in hell are they doing all this? And who are they, anyway?” Walter growled, running his hand through his thinning hair in frustration.
“I haven’t seen anyone, but my guess is those two guys from last week brought in reinforcements, and as for what they want—” Cal shrugged. “I’d say they want me.”
“Because you got the drop on them?”
“And bashed one of them in the head,” Neenah added. She was sitting on the cold concrete next to Creed. She hadn’t strayed far from his side since the night before.
“I didn’t say it was reasonable,” Cal said. “Some people let their egos get involved, and they turn vicious.”
“But this—this is so far over the top, it’s insane,” Sherry protested. Seven people were dead. This was way beyond squashed egos. “If they’re that mad, why didn’t they just catch you out somewhere and stomp your ass?”
“I’m hard to stomp,” he said mildly. “Maybe this is the mob way of saying, ‘Mind your own business.’ I just don’t know.”
“Mob? You think it’s the mob?” Milly put in.
That question earned another shrug. “I’d have to say it’s possible.”
“The geography works against us,” Creed said, pulling the conversation back on subject. He indicated the map he’d sketched. “The river makes it impossible to operate on this side. The current is too fast to ford the river anywhere around here, and those rocks would bash any boat to pieces in seconds. Upriver is a vertical canyon that you can’t go around, so that direction is a no-go.”
“The land peninsula Trail Stop is on is shaped like a paramecium,” Cal continued. “The bridge was at the tail, and on this side of the tail is the river. We have no land there to work with, and the river is a natural barricade. Right here”—he touched Creed’s sketch—“are mountains only a goat can negotiate. So that funnels us down this side of the paramecium, toward this cut in the mountains, and they’ve sealed that off with shooters. They have thermal scopes, which work best at night, but during the daytime they don’t need the scopes to see. I’ll have to wait until night, and go into the water to dissipate my heat signature.”
“How long would it take you to get through the cut?” Sherry asked.
“I don’t have to go through the cut. All I have to do is get by one of the shooters, then I’m behind them and can follow the road.”
Cate sucked in her breath with an audible gasp. She wasn’t a tactician, but she knew how cold he’d been last night, how close to hypothermia. And the water hadn’t gotten any warmer since then. Who knew how long he’d have to stay in the stream, waiting for the right moment? Then he’d have to walk miles in those cold, wet clothes, and he’d be losing more body heat every moment. And if he was seen by any of them on the other side of the stream, they would be hunting him as if he were an animal, and he would be too cold to evade them. Why wasn’t any
one saying no, this was too dangerous? Why were they so willing to let him risk his life?
Because, as he’d pointed out, there was no one else. Creed was hurt. Mario was dead. All the others were middle-aged and out of shape, or elderly and really out of shape.
Except for her.
“No,” she said, because no one else would. “No. It’s too dangerous, and don’t try to tell me it isn’t,” she said violently when Cal opened his mouth to do just that. “Do you think they won’t be waiting for someone to try that? You could barely walk last night, you were so cold from being in that water. And what happens to us if you get killed?”
“I imagine they’ll go away, since I’m the one they want.”
His calmness made her want to scream, to grab him and shake him for daring to be so casual with his life. She stood with her fists clenched while all those damned men stared at her as if she just didn’t understand. She understood, all right, and she wasn’t going to live through that again.
“You don’t know that. We don’t know for certain who they are or what they want. What if it has nothing to do with you? And even if it did, what makes you think they’d just pack up and leave? They’ve killed seven people, and we’re all agreed that’s a drastic action to take just because you got the better of them. It’s something else, it has to be. We just don’t know what.”
He regarded her thoughtfully, then nodded. “You’re right. It has to be something else.”
“Can you guarantee you’ll make it past them without being spotted?”
“No, I can’t guarantee it.”
“Then we can’t risk losing you, Cal. We can’t. We aren’t helpless, but we are cut off, and they have the upper hand.” Desperately she searched for inspiration, some way out that didn’t involve Cal risking his life against odds that were weighted against him. He was right, in that the most direct way was through the shooters. If they could somehow go up and over—
“We can’t just sit and wait,” Creed said. “We aren’t prepared for a siege, and that’s what this is—”
Cate felt as if her voice were coming from outside her. “There’s another way,” she heard herself say. Everyone shut up and looked at her, and she found herself moving forward. Deep inside her a panicked little voice was saying no, no, but somehow she couldn’t stop her feet from moving as she pushed her way through the knot of people to jab her finger hard on the mountains Cal had judged goat-worthy. “I can get up those mountains. I’ve been up those mountains. I’m a climber, you know that, you saw my gear. It’s safe when you tie off”—that wasn’t quite the truth, but she was going with it—“and they won’t be expecting us to try that route, so they won’t be watching. No one will be shooting, no one will be sticking his neck out like a sacrificial lamb.”
“Cate,” Cal began. “You have two kids.”
“I know,” she said, tears gathering in her eyes. “I know.” And she wanted to see them grow up. She wanted to take care of them and hold her grandchildren and have all the million other things parents dreamed of. But she couldn’t shake a sudden certainty that he wouldn’t make it through if he went with his plan, which would leave them even more vulnerable. Everyone here could end up dead, and her kids would lose their mother anyway. As dangerous as it was, she didn’t think going up the mountains was as dangerous as what Cal was proposing.
“She’s right,” Roy Edward interrupted.
They all turned toward the old man. He was sitting on one of the dining room chairs that they’d brought down the night before. His left arm and the left side of his face were colored a deep purple from a fall, but his mouth was a grim line. “What you’re wanting to do is dangerous, boy, and I don’t see why you’d think we’d be willing to sacrifice you to save ourselves.”
There was a murmur of agreement. Cate was so grateful to the crusty old man she could have hugged him.
“Going over the mountains in that direction will take too long,” Cal pointed out.
“If you kept on in that direction, yes, but these mountains are riddled with abandoned mines.” Roy Edward hauled himself to his feet and unsteadily made his way over to them. “I know because my daddy worked in some of them, and I played in ’em when I was a sprout. There used to be trails from the cut that wound all over, because every one of them started from there. Makes sense they weren’t going to climb up from the other side, don’t it? As I remember, one or two of those old mines go completely through a fold in the mountains. Don’t know what kind of shape they’d be in after all these years, but if you could get through one of them, that could save considerable time.”
He traced a shaky forefinger across the mountains to the cut and looked up at Cate. “Even if the mines are blocked, which I expect they are, you could work your way over to the cut. You’d be way above where these bastards would be looking, and the cover is dense up there. Once you got to the cut, you’d be behind them.”
She wiped the tears from her face and turned to face Cal. “I’m going,” she said shakily. “No matter what you do, I’m going.”
He was silent a moment, his pale gaze searching her face and reading the desperation there. He glanced at Creed, and she couldn’t read the message that passed between them.
“All right,” he finally said in that calm way of his, as if she’d said she was going to the grocery store. “But I’m going with you.”
25
CATE WAS ASTONISHED—YOU DIDN’T JUST “GO” ROCK climbing; it was something that took conditioning, preparation, and experience—but then she recalled a conversation they’d had when Cal opened the door to the attic stairs after she broke the key to it, just days ago. Days. Dear God, so much had happened it seemed as if weeks had passed. “You said you’d done some mountaineering.” Mountaineering was different from rock climbing, but a lot of the equipment was the same. She supposed it was basically the same principle, too, just some different techniques.
“Mostly mountaineering,” he corrected. “Some climbing.”
Creed spun the notebook around in that decisive way he had and took up the pen. “Okay, let’s make a list of what you’ll need so nothing is forgotten. How long do you think it will take you to get through the cut and to a phone?” He looked at Cate as he spoke, because she had been on climbs here.
All the climbs she’d done had been day climbs, but she knew the terrain they were talking about. The mountains loomed behind her house, and she saw them every day. She could look at several of the rock faces and think, “I climbed you”. She knew how long it took to get to them, and how long to go up them. In some places the ascent might be easier than the climbs she and Derek had mapped out, because a challenging climb had been what they were there for. Memories flooded back, crystal-clear mental pictures of exactly what she was proposing to do, the climbs and hiking they would face.
She finally said, “I’m thinking a day and a half, maybe two days, to get to a point where we can start hiking. How far would it be to the cut, Roy Edward?”
He snorted. “As the crow flies, maybe five miles, but you’re not a crow. With all the up and down, I’d say you’re looking at fifteen, twenty miles.”
“Daylight hours only,” Cal said. “We won’t be able to use lights. So…two days of hiking, and that’s a hard pace. Four days total to the cut.”
Four days. Cate felt sick to her stomach. That was too long, way too long. So much could happen in that length of time—
Neenah reached out and took her hand. “We’ll be all right,” she said firmly. “We’ll hold out, no matter what they want or what they do.”
“Damn right,” Walter said. He looked tired, they all did, but there was also an undiminished fury in his eyes. They had been attacked, friends had died, and he didn’t look inclined to throw up his hands in surrender. “Just about all of us have some sort of rifle or shotgun; we have ammunition—and more of it in the general store if we need it. We have food, and we have water. If those sons of bitches thought we’d be an easy target, they can just thi
nk again.”
A muted chorus of “yeahs,” “damn straights,” and “that’s rights” filled the basement, and heads nodded.
Cal scratched his jaw. “Along that line—Neenah, you have a good many fifty-pound bags of feed in the back of the store.”
“Yes, I’ve started stocking up for the winter. Why?”
“Not even an armor-piercing bullet will go through bags of sand, which is why the military uses them. We don’t have sand, but we do have those bags of feed. Feed won’t be as good as sand—it isn’t packed as tightly—but stack ’em two deep and you’ve got an effective barricade.” He paused. “By the way, I chopped a hole in the ceiling.”
She blinked, then smiled. “Of course you did. I wondered how you got to your rooms.” She indicated his clothes. If having a hole in the ceiling of her store bothered her, she didn’t show it.
Cal looked around the basement. “All of you can’t stay here; it’s too crowded, and it isn’t necessary. We’ll pick out the safest houses, the ones with the least exposure, and spread out. We can use the feed bags to fortify the walls exposed to gunfire. That way you can function better and keep a better watch. Get some trenches dug, too, so you can move from place to place in safety. They don’t have to be deep and they don’t have to be long, just long enough to cross some open areas and deep enough for a belly crawl.”
“We need food, too, and blankets, and clothes. Some people need their medications,” said Sherry. “Show us how to get from place to place without getting our asses blown off, so we can start gathering stuff.”
“I’ll get most of it—” he began, but she raised her hand to stop him.
