“Hell of an idea, hotshot!”
“Maybe, and maybe not. That’s a damned good woman you’re hunting, Winter. I’m not real sure she wants to be caught. I think she should remember first. That’s the only way her choice will have any meaning. That’s the best chance she has of surviving.”
“Is that what Janice thinks?” Rafe asked.
Alana was less than fifty feet away, close enough to hear Rafe clearly. He and Stan were facing one another. If the men noticed her slow progress toward them, they made no sign.
“I’m not sure Janice is able to think straight where you’re involved,” said Stan.
Alana stopped, held by the stark pain in Stan’s voice.
“There’s nothing between me and Janice,” Rafe said. “There never was.”
Stan hesitated, then made an odd gesture, turning his hands palms up as though to accept or hold something.
“I’d like to believe that. I really would.”
“Believe it,” Rafe said.
“Hell, it doesn’t matter right now. It wouldn’t matter at all, except that I don’t want Alana trapped because Janice allowed emotion to louse up her judgment.”
“She hasn’t.”
“If it all goes to hell,” Stan said, “I don’t want Janice blaming herself. She’s been through enough of that on your account. But that doesn’t matter, either. Not up here. It’s just like the bad old days. All that matters is the mission.”
“Then quit screwing it up.”
“You’ve got two more days,” Stan said flatly. “If your way doesn’t work by then, I’ll try mine.”
When Rafe spoke, the suppressed violence in his voice curled and cracked like a whip, making Stan flinch.
“If you do anything that hurts Alana,” Rafe said, “you’ll go back down Broken Mountain the same way Jack Reeves did—in a green plastic bag. Do you read me, corporal?
“I’m not a corporal anymore. And you’re not a captain.”
Stan turned slightly.
For a moment Alana thought he had spotted her, for she was directly in his line of sight.
Suddenly Stan made a swift feint toward Rafe. At the first hint of movement, Rafe swiftly assumed a fighting stance. Legs slightly bent, hands held slightly apart at chest level, he waited for Stan to move again.
“You’re as fast as ever,” Stan said, something close to admiration in his voice.
Stan moved again very quickly, his big hands reaching for the other man. Rafe stepped into the attack, pivoted smoothly, and let Stan slide by, not touching him except for the hand that closed around Stan’s wrist.
With fluid grace, Rafe twisted Stan’s arm and brought it up behind his back, applying pressure until Stan was on his knees. Stan’s blond hair shimmered palely in the twilight as Rafe bent down, his face a mask of cold rage.
“No!”
Rafe’s head snapped around at Alana’s scream. When he saw the frightened, hunted look on her face, he released Stan and started toward her.
“Alana!” Rafe said.
Alana spun away from him and ran back into the forest.
Rafe started after her, then realized that chasing her would only increase her fear. With a soundless snarl, he turned on Stan, who had made no move to get to his feet.
“You knew she was there, didn’t you?” Rafe demanded.
Stan nodded and smiled grimly.
“I saw her out of the corner of my eye,” he agreed. “That’s why I jumped you. Think it reminded her of something, old buddy?”
“Get up.”
Rafe’s voice was soft and deadly.
“So you can take me apart?” Stan asked, smiling oddly. “No way, Winter. I’ve seen what you can do when you’re mad. I think I’ll just sit out this dance.”
“And I think,” Rafe said, spacing each word carefully, showing how much his control cost, “that if you don’t get out of my sight, I’ll take you apart anyway.”
15
W IND FLEXED AND flowed around the lodge, bringing with it the sound of laughter. After the laughter came words without meaning, wind, more laughter.
Alana rolled over in bed, tangling in the covers for the tenth time and wishing that everyone would enjoy the poker game with a little less enthusiasm.
She wondered if Rafe was with the happy card players. Then she remembered his fury at Stan. She doubted that Rafe was in the last cabin, laughing and drawing cards.
Stan’s accusations turned and prowled inside Alana’s mind like the wind. She wanted to reject them out of hand, completely, yet they kept finding weaknesses in her resolve, cracks in her wall of refusal, little doubts clinging like tentacles.
From the moment Alana saw Rafe at the airport, she had been certain that he still loved her. It wasn’t a thoughtful conclusion; it was instinct, pure and simple and very, very deep. Yet assuming that Rafe loved her was groundless, even ridiculous.
He had believed she was happily married six weeks after his “death” had been reported. A year ago he had returned her letter unopened. Before yesterday, nothing had happened to make him believe any differently.
Before yesterday, Rafe must have hated her.
Then why did he pressure Bob to get me home? Alana asked silently. Why has Rafe been so very gentle, so understanding, from the moment he met me at the airport?
No answer came but that of the wind blowing over mountains and forest and cabin alike.
Did something happen on Broken Mountain? Alana wondered. Something that I can’t remember, something that made Rafe believe my marriage to Jack was a desperate sham from the beginning?
The wind curled and shook the cabin like a powerful, transparent cat.
A chill condensed in Alana. She pulled the covers closer and rolled over again, seeking the comfort that had never come to her since Broken Mountain.
Yet no matter where she turned, she kept hearing Stan’s voice, Stan’s accusations.
They horrified her.
Is the truth that brutal? Alana cried silently. Did Rafe pursue me to save himself?
Was Jack’s death less than accidental?
Is that why Rafe refused to tell me what happened on Broken Mountain?
Waves of coldness swept over Alana, roughening her skin. She lay very still, curled around herself, shivering despite the blankets heaped on top of her.
Alana knew that Rafe was capable of deadly violence. He had been trained for it, was skilled in it, had lived with it for most of his adult life. But she couldn’t believe that he was capable of such sly deception, that he would coolly plan to murder Jack and then seduce and marry her in order to ensure her silence.
That didn’t sound like the Rafe she had known, the Rafe she had loved.
The Rafe she still loved.
If Stan had accused Jack of such vicious lies, Alana would have been sickened—but she would have believed.
Jack had been a totally selfish man. Jack had been capable of smiling lies and chilling cruelties, whatever it took to bend the world to his comfort.
Jack had been capable of cold-blooded murder.
Alana’s stomach moved uneasily. Cold sweat broke out over her body. Suddenly she couldn’t bear the clammy sheets and slack, heavy blankets any longer. She needed the lively warmth and flickering companionship of a fire.
She sat up in bed and groped for her housecoat. All she found was the thick robe she had borrowed from the downstairs bathroom. Impatiently she pulled on the indigo robe, letting the sleeves trail down over her knuckles. The hem was long enough to brush the tops of her toes.
Groping along the wall, Alana worked her way down the inky darkness of the stairway. The living room was empty, without light. The fireplace ashes were as cold and pale as the moon.
Rafe hadn’t been in the lodge at all tonight. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Alana since she had run from him through the forest. After her irrational panic had passed, she had waited for Rafe by the trail.
He hadn’t come.
Finally, when the
moon had risen in pale brilliance over Broken Mountain, Alana had given up and gone inside, shivering with cold and loneliness.
She struck a wooden match on the fireplace stone. Using its flickering light, she peered into the wood box. There was a handful of kindling and a few small chunks of stove wood. Not enough to warm the hearth, much less her.
With a dispirited curse, Alana let the top of the wood box fall back into place. She turned to go back to bed, then froze.
A subtle sound drifted through the cabin, a distant keening that floated on the shifting mountain wind.
The strange, bittersweet music held Alana motionless, aching to hear more. She held her breath, listening with an intensity that made her tremble.
Music curled around her lightly, tantalizing her at a threshold just below memory, music curving across the night like a fly line, lengthening in grace and beauty with each surge of energy, each magic, rhythmic pulse.
Blindly Alana felt her way through the lodge to the front door, lured by the elusive music. She opened the door, shut it silently behind her, and held her breath, listening and looking.
There was laughter tumbled by wind, bright squares of light glowing from the cabin at the end of the row. Silhouettes dark against one curtained window, wordless movements of hands and arms, more laughter.
But no music.
It wasn’t somebody’s transistor radio or tape player that had slid through Alana’s defenses, calling to her in a language older and more potent than words.
Yet there was nowhere else the music could be coming from. Of the three cabins that stretched out east of the lodge, only one was glowing with light, only one was brimming with laughter when people won or lost small bets. The two other cabins were empty, as black as night itself. Blacker, for the cabins had neither moon nor stars to light their interior darkness.
The wind stirred, blowing across the back of Alana’s neck, teasing her ears with half-remembered, half-imagined music. Slowly she turned, facing west.
The fourth cabin was several hundred feet away, wrapped in forest and darkness, not really part of the fishing camp. No light gleamed from the cabin in welcome, no laughter swirled, no sense of brimming life came to her.
And then the music called to Alana, an irresistible lure drawing her closer with each note.
She stood and listened for a moment more, her heart beating hard, her blood rushing so quickly that it overwhelmed the mixed murmur of music and wind.
Without stopping to think, she stepped off the porch onto the overgrown path to the fourth cabin. Pine needles and sharp stones smarted against her bare feet, but she noticed them only at a distance. The small hurts meant nothing, for she had recognized the source of the music.
Rafe.
Rafe and his harmonica, mournful chords lamenting love and loss.
It was Alana’s own song curling toward her across the night, drifting down on the seamless black surface of her despair, music shimmering with emotion. Once she had sung this song with Rafe. Once they had looked into each other’s eyes and shared sad songs of death and broken dreams.
And they had smiled, certain of the power and endurance of their own love.
I heard a lark this morning
Singing in the field.
I heard a lark this morning
Singing wild.
I didn’t know
You had gone away.
I didn’t know
Love had gone to yesterday.
I heard a lark this morning
Singing wild.
I heard a lark this morning
Singing free.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll know.
Maybe tomorrow you’ll tell me
Why the lark sang.
And maybe yesterday
Never came.
I heard a lark this morning
Singing in the field.
I heard a lark this morning
Singing free.
It did not sing for me.
The music Alana had once picked out on her guitar now came back to her in haunting chords sung by Rafe’s harmonica. The words she had written ached in her throat and burned behind her eyes.
Thick terry cloth folds wrapped around her legs, slowing her. She picked up the hem of the robe and began to run toward the cabin, not feeling the rough path or the tears running down her face, drawn by her music.
By Rafe.
The cabin stood alone in a small clearing. There was no flicker of candlelight, no yellow shine of kerosene lamps, nothing but moonlight pouring through the cabin windows in a soundless fall of silver radiance. Sad harmonies shivered through the clearing, shadows of despair braiding through the pale brilliance of moonlight.
Slowly, like a sigh, the song changed into silence. The last transparent notes of music were carried away on a cold swirl of wind.
Alana stood at the edge of the clearing, transfixed by music, aching with silence. Only her face was visible, a ghostly oval above the textured darkness of her robe and the sliding black shadows of evergreens flexing beneath the wind.
She hesitated, feeling the wind and tears cold on her cheeks. Then the mournful chords began all over, sorrow coming back again, unchanged.
I heard a lark this morning . . .
Alana couldn’t bear to stand alone in the haunted, wind-filled forest and listen to her yearning song played by the only man she had ever loved.
Slowly she walked across the clearing, seeing only tears and moonlight, hearing only song and sorrow. She went up the cabin steps like a ghost, soundless, wrapped in darkness. The front door stood open, for there was neither warmth nor light to keep inside.
The cabin had only one room. Rafe was stretched out on the bed that doubled as a couch during the day. Only his face and hands were visible, lighter shades of darkness against the overwhelming night inside the cabin.
Silently, without hesitation, Alana crossed the room. She didn’t know if Rafe sensed her presence. He made no move toward her, neither gesture nor words nor silence. He simply poured himself into the harmonica, music twisting through her, chords of desolation shaking her.
Alana knelt by the bed, trying to see Rafe’s face, his eyes. She could see only the pale shimmer of moonlight, for the sad strains of music had blinded her with tears.
I heard a lark this morning
Singing wild.
With each familiar chord, each aching harmony of note with note, Alana felt the past sliding away, nightmare draining into song until she knew only music and no fear at all.
Swaying slightly, her body lost to the music, Alana’s mind slowly succumbed to emotions that were as wary and elusive as trout shimmering deep within a river pool. She didn’t know how many times the song ended and began, notes curling and curving across her inner darkness, music drifting down, floating, calling her, luring her up from the dark depths of her own mind.
Alana knew only that at some point she began to sing. At first her song was wordless, a supple blending of her voice with the harmonica’s smooth chords, clear harmonies woven between instrument and singer. The melody line passed between them, changed by one and then the other, renewed and renewing each other by turns.
And then, like a wild lark, Alana’s voice flew free.
It soared and turned on invisible currents, swept up emotions and transmuted them into pouring song, a beauty so transparent, so flawless, that a shiver of awe rippled through Rafe. For an instant the harmonica hesitated. Then he gave himself to the music as completely as Alana had, pursuing the brilliant clarity of her voice, soaring with it, sharing her ecstatic flight out of darkness, touching the sun.
Finally there was nothing left of the song but the last note shimmering in the darkness, sliding into moonlight and the soft whisper of the wind.
Alana put her head in her hands and wept soundlessly. Rafe stroked her hair slowly, gently, until her lips turned into his palm and he felt her tears slide between his fingers. With careful hands, he eased Alana onto the bed beside him, murmu
ring her name, feeling her shiver as she came close to him. Her hands were cool when she touched his face, and she shivered again.
Rafe shifted until he could free the sleeping bag he had been lying on. He unzipped it and spread smooth folds of warmth over her. When he started to get out of bed, she made a sound of protest and sat up. He kissed her cold hands.
“Lie still,” he said. “I’ll start a fire.”
But first Rafe closed the cabin door, shutting out the wind. He moved swiftly in the darkness, not bothered by the lack of light.
There was a muted rustle of paper and kindling, then the muffled thump of cured wood being stacked in the fireplace a match flared in the darkness.
Alana blinked and held her breath, shivering again. Rafe’s face looked like a primitive mask cast in pure gold, and his eyes were incandescent topaz beneath the dense midnight of his hair. For long moments he and the fire watched one another, two entities made of heat and potent light.
With the silence and grace of a flame, Rafe turned toward Alana, sensing her eyes watching him. He stood and came toward her, his expression concealed by shadow.
The bed shifted beneath his weight as he sat and looked at her face illuminated by the gliding dance of flames. Her eyes were both dark and brilliant, her skin was flushed, and her lips were curved around a smile. Reflected fire turned and ran through her hair in liquid ribbons of light.
“You are even more beautiful than your song,” whispered Rafe.
His fingertip traced Alana’s mouth and then the slender hand that rested on top of the sleeping bag. He took her hand and rubbed it gently between his palms.
“You’re cold,” Rafe said. “How long were you outside?”
Alana tried to remember how long she had stood in the clearing, but all that seemed real to her now was Rafe’s heat flowing into her as he touched her.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Silently Rafe rubbed Alana’s hand until it no longer felt cool to his touch. When his fingers went up her arm, he encountered the heavy cloth of the robe she wore. He made a startled sound, then laughed softly.
“So that’s where it went,” said Rafe.
“What?”
Forget Me Not Page 19
