"You're afraid to believe I'll get you to the Rock," he said quietly. "I know a little something about fear."
"Ha!" It was a harsh, grating sound that wanted to be a laugh and wasn't.
"Really? Then why get blind drunk the second I turn my back?"
She gave him a crooked, soggy grin. "Shows how much you know. I always get blind drunk. It has nothing to do with you."
He stared at her a long time. She shifted uneasily be-
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neath his perusal, and knew that she wasn't drunk enough to be with him, that she might never be drunk enough. His eyes seemed to pierce her armor, to see the frightened, vulnerable girl she'd never been able to completely eradicate. "Let's go to bed, Lainie."
"So thass it," she said in a rush. "Thass what this 'trust me' is all about. You want to get me into bed."
He sighed. "No. I meant, let's go to sleep. You'll feel better in the morning."
"I feel good now. And sleeping is . .." She started to say, meant to say, the last thing I need; she even opened her mouth to say it, but what came out was different. "Hard for me."
Lainie couldn't believe she'd said it, couldn't believe she'd thrown her vulnerability out there for him to see. She glanced wildly around for another bottle of whiskey. She wasn't drunk enough; Jesus, she wasn't drunk enough.
"I know how that goes."
She paused. It seemed to take an hour for her to turn to look at him, and when she did, she wished to hell she hadn't. He was looking at her with an understanding that unaccountably made her want to cry. She sniffed and raised her eyebrows, trying to look sober and casual. "I want another drink."
"You've had enough."
She clicked her heels together and shot her right hand forward. "Heil Hitler."
He ignored her and sat on the fallen log near the fire. Beside him, two sleeping bags lay side by side. He pulled off his boots and set them aside, then crawled into one of the sleeping bags, patting the one beside him. "Come to bed. You need the sleep."
You need the sleep. The words washed through her,
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leaving her ragged and shaken. "I ... don't sleep well. You go ahead."
"Come here, Alaina." His voice was soft and rich. It seemed she'd waited a lifetime for that voice, that quiet request. Before she knew it, she'd taken a step toward him.
When she realized what she'd done, she jerked to a stop.
"Don't be afraid," he breathed.
She stiffened. "I'm not afraid."
"Prove it. Lay by me."
That had been a stupid thing to say. She hadn't walked into his trap; she'd hurtled into it. And now there was nothing left to do but back up her words with action. Slowly she crossed the campsite, only stumbling over her feet twice, and dropped onto the edge of the bedroll.
He reached down, took her boot in his hands. Startled, she glanced at him before she could stop herself. Their gazes met. She saw in his eyes a gentleness that stole her breath.
He leaned over and pulled the boot off, tossing it aside. Then he reached for the other foot.
"I can get that," she said in an irritatingly weak voice.
He was angled toward her, so that he had to turn his head to look at her, and when he did, they were almost close enough to kiss. "I know you can. Let me."
The words sent a shiver through her. She dredged up an ineffective smile and wished she had another drink. She wasn't drunk enough to be in bed with this man. Not by a long shot. "Whatever."
He withdrew the boot and threw it beside the other one, then eased back, leaning against the makeshift pillow
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he'd propped on a fallen log. Once again, he patted the bag beside him. "Come on, Lainie. Get in."
Warily she crawled into the bag and yanked the sheepskin-lined duck fabric up to her breasts.
For a long time they sat there, both silent and staring. Lainie felt his presence beside her, warm and strong and waiting. She knew that he wanted something from her, but she didn't know what, couldn't imagine what.
Her heartbeat sped up. Fear blossomed in the pit of her stomach, making her swallow convulsively. It had always frightened her to feel out of control, and right now it felt as if she were spinning, as if everything she knew, or thought she knew, were being slowly, inexorably drawn away from her and concealed in some impenetrable darkness. She wanted to reach for it, to say or hear something normal, something expected. Wanted desperately to feel something besides this vague, blurry sense of isolation and loss.
"There were years when I didn't sleep at all," he said at last.
The words surprised her so much that for a moment she forgot her fear. She turned to him. She wanted to say something, but she couldn't think of a thing. So she just stared at him, waiting.
"And then there was that year I spent in the opium dens in San Francisco." He turned and gave her a crooked grin. "Of course, it could have been two weeks."
She almost smiled. A strange sensation moved through her, loosened her tensed muscles and made her relax. Tentatively she wiggled backward and sat beside him, her lower back pressed against the creaking log. Suddenly she felt the whiskey, felt it as a liberating heat in her blood. "I know that feeling," she said with a hic-cuping snort.
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"But it doesn't matter. Some things you can't forget," he whispered, and there was a sorrow in his voice, a pain that touched something deep inside her, something that hadn't been touched in years.
She looked at him, unable to help herself. He sat slumped, his head bowed. He was staring at his own hands, curled on the green fabric of the bag. She knew instinctively that he was seeing something else entirely, something that hurt.
She wanted to touch him, to brush the silver strands of hair from his face. The reaction scared her, made her pull back.
But he turned to her, held her close with the honesty in his eyes.
"Wh-What do you want from me?" she said, unable to make her voice anything but a whisper.
"Nothing," he said quickly, too quickly. Then he gave her a brittle smile. "I guess right now I want you to sleep."
Confusing emotions hurtled through her. She tried to focus on them, tried to figure out what she felt right now and what she was afraid of. But the more she tried to understand, the sleepier she felt.
A small, fluttering sigh escaped her lips; her body melted into the warm sleeping bag. The whiskey was a soothing warmth in her blood, a slight buzzing in her ears.
He leaned down toward her, so close she could feel the soft flannel of his shirtsleeve against her cheek. She thought for a terrifying moment that he was going to touch her. She flinched and tried to twist away, but she couldn't move. Or maybe she didn't really want to. Her heart started pounding in her chest.
"Good night, Lainie," he said quietly, then rolled onto his back.
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She lay tense and unmoving, staring up at the night sky, battling an irritating sense of disappointment. "Good night, Killian."
They lay there, side by side, without touching. It was a long, long time before either one of them slept.
Chapter Nineteen
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Someone screamed.
Killian jerked awake, instinctively reaching for the gun beside him. His fingers dug through the dirt, found the metal grip, and closed around it as he snapped to a sit.
Disoriented, he blinked and looked around, searching for the source of the danger. Darkness pressed in on him, a million stars glittered in the night sky. It was quiet now; no hint of the scream lingered in the cold, breezeless air.
He frowned. Had he imagined it? He let out his breath in a slow, steady stream and slumped forward. Setting the gun down, he closed his eyes and massaged his temples. The beginning strains of a headache pulsed behind his eyes.
A sound drifted to his ears, soft at first, like the whining whimper of a newborn kitten.
Lainie. Of course.
Turning, he glanced down at her. She lay on her back, asleep. Her fac
e was twisted into a grimace, her eyes were squeezed too tightly shut. Her hands were pale, fingers clutched talonlike around the green fabric of the sleeping bag. She writhed from side to side, emitting a low, throaty moan with every motion. "No . . . no ..."
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He leaned down toward her. "Lainie, you're dreaming." "Get away from me." She hissed the words and tried to say something else, but all she managed was a hoarse cry and then a broken, sobbing sound. "Lainie . . . you're dreaming. Wake up." Suddenly she screamed and sat up so fast, she knocked him off balance. Wild-eyed, she looked around, blinking, and he didn't know if she was awake or still gripped by the horrors of sleep. "Lainie?"
She spun to look at him. He winced at the sight of her, so deathly pale and terrified. She screamed again and shoved her way out of the sleeping bag. With a desperate, hacking breath, she stumbled away and ran to the almost cold campfire. There she stopped dead.
He could hear her breathing, ragged in the silence. Her shoulders rounded, then she hugged herself and straightened.
He didn't know what to do, what to say. She looked so alone out there, so frightened and lonely and disconnected from the world.
He peeled out of the sleeping bag and got to his feet, padding silently toward her in stockinged feet. He reignited the fire and set the now cold coffeepot on the flames. He plucked two tin cups from the pile of used dishes and waited for her to say something.
The seconds spilled into minutes and passed in silence. The fire crackled and popped, the coffee began a slow, roiling splash against the metal pot. And still neither one of them spoke.
He watched her, saw the stiff tenseness of her body, and knew that she hadn't shaken the fear yet. It hovered around her like a dense fog, pulled the color from her cheeks and left her lips pale.
She was such an odd mixture of strength and vulner-
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ability. So often she made him think of Emily, though there was only the most fragile of similarities between the women. Emily had been all feminine softness with a quiet weakness running throughout. She hadn't been able to deal with life's cruelties. She'd depended on him for everything�and that had ruined both of them.
Lainie was so different, so hard and angry, but the strength she showed seemed to come more from fear than resolve, as if she'd spent a whole life fighting and didn't know any other way. And yet, down deep, she was perhaps more fragile than Emily, more easily hurt.
Maybe Lainie was what Emily would have become if she'd had the strength to keep living. If she'd learned how to fight for life. Strangely, it was Lainie's vulnerability that drew him to her, but it was her strength that he admired. Lainie might ask him for help, might depend on him, but she'd never rely on him like Emily had.
He pushed to his feet and moved cautiously toward Lainie. Pouring a cup of coffee, he offered it to her.
She reached out, curled her fingers around the handle, and drew the cup close, letting the steam pelt her chin. "Thanks." Her voice was hoarse still, a little soft.
"Sit down, Lainie," he said, gesturing to a nearby rock. Then he sat down on a log across from her.
She was careful not to look at him. Nodding briefly, she lowered herself slowly to the rock and lifted the cup to her lips. "Thanks for the coffee."
He knew he shouldn't say anything now, should just keep silent and sit beside her. But he couldn't do it. He felt compelled to let her know that he understood. "I had nightmares for years afterward," he said softly.
Slowly, almost against her will, she looked up at him. Her face was still pale and drawn, her eyes still shadowed and steeped in pain. "How do you do that?"
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"What?"
She waited so long to answer that he thought she wasn't going to. Then, quietly, she said, "Know what I need to hear?"
He didn't know what to say. The moment seemed fragile suddenly, easily broken by the wrong word. But it felt as if she'd opened the door to him, just a little, given him the first honest glimpse into her soul that he'd ever had, and it was a dark, lonely place just like his own. "What are you so afraid of?"
She looked away, shrugged. "I'm afraid I won't get to the Rock in time."
He knew as she said it that it was a half-truth, a partial answer. There was so much more in her eyes. "No. You've been scared a long time, Lainie."
She stared out at the desert, unmoving, so still that she seemed to have stopped breathing, then slowly she turned to him. He could tell that she was trying desperately hard to be casual. "All my life," she said softly.
"Because of the .. ." His words melted into an awkward silence.
"You can say it. Rape. But no, that wasn't what started it. It took me a long time to sort through the pain of that night, but after a while it started to dim. The body heals a hell of a lot faster than the mind."
He knew he shouldn't ask, but he couldn't help himself. "So what started it?"
She shrugged. "A lot of people have tried to answer that question. They all had opinions about my mind, about how it works." She gave a brittle laugh. "Or didn't work. Doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, foster parents. Everyone's taken a crack at figuring me out."
He frowned, trying to sort through the confusing jumble of her words. But he knew it wasn't the words
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that mattered. It was the answer. "Any of them ever do it?"
"Maybe one. Dr. Gray ..." She said the name softly, as if it meant something. "She seemed to think I needed to be safe."
You could be safe with me. The thought came at him from nowhere, blindsiding him. He tried to push it away, tried not to believe in it, but it was too late.
"You're safe now," he said quietly.
She turned to him quickly, her eyes wide. Their gazes met for a second, and he saw a flaring of hope, then a crushing bleakness. She laughed; it was a forced, harsh sound. "Yeah, I've heard that one before. There is no safety in life."
He looked at her a long time, wondering what to say. Somehow, his thoughts bled into words and slipped from his mouth. "You scare me, Lainie."
She frowned. "How?"
He shook his head. He'd spoken without thinking, and now he felt slightly disoriented. Putting emotions into words had never been easy for him, but he knew that he had to try. He didn't want this moment to pass into nothingness, into the murky realm of what-might-have-beens. "I ... lost my heart once to a woman very much like you. But she didn't have your strength."
"What does that have to do with me?"
"I'm not sure."
For a breathless second, she didn't respond, just sat there, motionless, staring at him. Then suddenly she jerked to her feet. "What a weird conversation. Let's get going, Killian. It's almost first light."
The connection between them was gone, severed cleanly. He watched her walk away, her body held stiff and rigid, her chin high. She strode to the camp kit and
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started burrowing through the supplies for bacon and beans.
As he watched her, listening to the rattle and clank of her nervous hands riffling through the goods, he knew what his broken heart had to do with her.
He wanted her to know he was capable of that kind of emotion.
"Christ," he cursed softly. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that caring about Lainie would be the biggest mistake of his life.
And somehow, without even knowing when, he'd already made it.
Killian squatted by the small stream, staring unsee-ingly at his own reflection. He held the last breakfast plate, half-washed and forgotten. With a sigh, he eased back to a sit and let the plate clatter onto the rock beside him.
He stacked the bent tin dishes and carried them back to the campfire, repacking them before he turned to Lainie.
She sat huddled in a ball by the fire, looking at her feet, her arms drawn taut around her shins. She was terrified but trying to be brave, like a pathetically trapped animal, waiting, wondering if it should gnaw its foot off to be free.
&nbs
p; He winced at the thought, feeling sick inside and knowing it was his fault. He'd bound, tied, and gagged her, humiliated and beaten her. No wonder she was afraid of him.
He'd hurt her; that, he knew. But lots of people had hurt her. He could see it in her sometimes, that residual haunting in the eyes that told him more about her than he wanted to know.
What he saw in her eyes broke his heart.
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Suddenly everything he'd tried to be for the last fifteen years started slipping away, dissolving in the dirt at his feet. He couldn't cling to the shell he'd built around his soul anymore. It hadn't protected him anyway. All his hard, cold detachment hadn't saved him from this moment. From this woman.
He moved toward her, kneeled in the dirt beside her. "Lainie?"
She turned to him slowly, gave him an agonizingly frightened look. "You've changed your mind," she said dully. "We're going back to the hideout."
He wished he could blame her for not trusting him. "No," he said quietly. "I haven't changed my mind. Lainie, I'll do everything in my power to get you home."
She frowned at him. "Why?"
It was the second time she'd asked him that, and this time he saw the pathetic pain in the question. It told him so much about her life�a life startlingly like his own. Hollow and empty. "Because I need to." And with that realization, he found a thread of the man he used to be. He clutched it, holding fast. It felt good to be honest, for once. Damn good.
She didn't answer, just looked at him.
He knew he shouldn't say anything, that he should simply back up and walk away. But he felt so drawn to her right now, so connected, that he didn't want to let this moment go. It was the first time in fifteen years he'd wanted to be with someone, wanted genuinely to know someone, and he didn't want to go back to being alone so quickly.
He wanted to touch her, to reach out and stroke her hair and tell her that it was all right, but he was afraid of how she would react. So he sat there, staring at her,
wanting to touch her, waiting to see how close she wanted to be.
A dozen words filled his head, but none of them made it up his dry throat. Their gazes met.
He felt a crushing sense of inevitability; it swept him up in the hot magic of possibility. He stared at her, speechless, wondering if she felt it, too. The heady sense of beginning something new.
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