Walking After Midnight

by Karen Robards

  He disappeared, finally, under an outcropping of rock. It jutted about six feet straight out from the mountainside and was about eight feet off the ground. Vines and bushes grew densely in front of it so that inside it was almost like a cave, Summer discovered as she followed him beneath the overhang. He was sitting on the ground, cap resting beside him as he rummaged through the gym bag, when she dropped Muffy and wilted at his side.

  “We can rest here awhile. I don’t know about you, but I’m about out on my feet.” He barely glanced at her as he wrestled the quilt from the bag. Summer, so out of sorts and out of breath that she couldn’t even talk, eyed him evilly. He was out on his feet? What about her?

  “Want to sleep or eat first?”

  “Sleep? We get to sleep?” This prospect so pleased her that she temporarily forgot a lot of her animosity toward him. “Where?”

  A grin crooked his mouth. “Right here, Rosencrans. What were you expecting, a Holiday Inn?”

  “Here?” Summer glanced around. “Out in the open? There might be bears, or wolves, or … anything.”

  “After murderers, bears and wolves sound pretty tame to me. Besides, I don’t think they have wolves in the Smokies.”

  Summer noticed he didn’t say anything about bears. She was about to point this out when Muffy yapped and crawled into her lap.

  “She’s hungry,” Summer reminded him. “I guess that means we eat first.”

  “If you think I’m sharing what little food we have with a dog, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “She saved your life,” Summer pointed out.

  “Thank you,” Frankenstein said to Muffy. “Now go out and catch yourself a nice, juicy squirrel.”

  “She’s not that kind of dog. She’s a Grand Champion, for heaven’s sake. A show dog. My mother treats her like a child. I don’t think she’s ever been outside before without a leash.”

  “Tough,” Frankenstein said, and tossed Summer a pack of crackers. “We’ve got exactly eight packs of crackers, four beers, and a roll of breath mints between us and starvation. Then we’ll be catching squirrels.”

  There were six crackers to a cellophane-wrapped package. With Muffy’s pleading eyes on her, Summer ripped her package open with her teeth. What Frankenstein said made sense, in a callous, coldhearted way. They needed to save every single scrap of food for themselves.

  She passed Muffy a cracker anyway.

  Frankenstein, munching his own cracker, watched with blatant disapproval.

  “Women,” he muttered, shaking his head.

  “We saved your ass,” Summer responded, including Muffy in that we. “More than once, I might add.”

  To underline the point she passed Muffy another cracker.

  “Want a beer?” Apparently having decided to let the matter of Muffy and the crackers rest for the moment, he tore a Stroh’s from the ring-pack and held it out to her.

  “I hate beer.” Summer accepted it with a grimace.

  “I quit drinking beer a while back myself, but unless you see a handy spring it’s all we’ve got.”

  Summer grimaced and popped the top. She was really thirsty, or she wouldn’t have done it. Even the smell of beer was usually enough to turn her stomach. But she put the can to her mouth and drank. On top of the buttery, peanuty taste of the crackers, the warm beer was wet. That was the best she could say for it.

  “I don’t see how people drink this stuff,” she said, wrinkling her nose and passing the can to him. “Here, you may as well have the rest. I only took a sip.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess enjoying a beer just takes practice. What are you, some kind of goody-two-shoes teetotaler?” He accepted the can and looked at it for a moment, hefting it in his hand, his expression unreadable.

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” Summer said, offended by his sneering indictment of sensible people who chose not to indulge in alcohol. “What are you, an alcoholic?”

  “Yep,” he said, and held the can out to her without tasting its contents. “You want any more?”

  Stunned by his admission, Summer shook her head.

  “Sure?” he asked. Summer nodded. He shrugged and stood up to pour the rest of the beer out in the grass by the cave entrance. She was still staring at him as he dropped down beside her again, then crumpled the can in his hand and stuffed it back in the gym bag.

  “You can stop looking at me like that,” he said with a touch of grim humor as he met her gaze. “I didn’t drink it, did I? And I’m thirsty as hell, too.”

  Discomfited, Summer lowered her eyes and busied herself breaking her last cracker into tiny pieces to feed to Muffy, who licked her fingers appreciatively at the treat. When she looked up again, Frankenstein was spreading the quilt out on the rocky ground. It was the kind of quilt that one might keep in the back of the car for picnics, machine-made in a double wedding ring design. The background was cream, while the rings were formed with small, flower-printed squares of mauve and slate-blue cotton. The quilt was tattered around the edges, with a hole in one corner, and so faded that at first glance it was hard to distinguish the mauve from the blue.

  As Summer watched, Frankenstein lay down and rolled himself up in the quilt like a hot dog in pastry. Only his head, which nestled on the gym bag, was visible.

  His eyes closed. To all outward appearances, he was well on the way to falling asleep.

  “Hey, what about me?” Summer demanded, outraged.

  His eyes opened. He frowned at her for a long moment, then silently spread his arms, looking rather like a bird about to take flight as he opened the quilt for her. His message was unmistakable: Here’s the bed; if you want to use it, you’re going to have to share it with me.

  Quickly Summer reviewed the alternatives. They were few, and unattractive. At the moment what she needed more than anything was sleep. She was so tired, her eyes felt grainy. If she had been a flower, she would have drooped long since.

  Scowling, she slipped off her remaining shoe, tugged reflexively on her bra strap, and crawled into his arms.

  They closed around her, pulling her close. Within seconds her back nestled against his chest, her head was pillowed on the gym bag next to his and she was cocooned in his warmth and the quilt.

  Under the circumstances, to feel as safe as she suddenly did was absurd. She knew it, but she felt safe anyway.

  His steady breathing stirred her hair. From the sound of it, he was asleep almost the moment she lay still. As she drifted off in turn, Summer smiled a little. She suddenly had an irresistible mental picture of herself trying to explain to her mother just exactly how it was that she had wound up sleeping with Frankenstein.

  18

  Steve slept deeply and dreamlessly. When he opened his eyes at last, it was to find himself looking at Deedee.

  Impossibly, she seemed to be hovering some six feet above him, stretched out horizontally, lying on her back on the ceiling in fact. His eyes traveled over her with disbelief. She was wearing cowboy boots, skintight, faded-out blue jeans, and a leather motorcycle jacket. Her frizzy blond hair spilled over her shoulders and around her face, which sported a beaming smile framed in lots of red lipstick and a pair of bright blue, heavily mascaraed eyes.

  Definitely Deedee.

  But Deedee was dead.

  As he remembered that, a cold thrill of horror ran down his spine.

  She waggled her red-tipped fingers at him.

  Steve yelped and sat bolt upright. At least, he would have sat bolt upright if he hadn’t been all entangled in a sleeping woman and a tourniquet-like quilt.

  “Bad dream?” murmured the woman—Rosencrans—groggily, batting thick, mascaraless eyelashes at him as she tried to fight free of sleep. Sleep won. Within a matter of seconds she was once again out like a light.

  Even now that he was half upright—he was leaning back on his elbows in a semi-sitting position, the best he could do under the circumstances—she still cuddled against his chest, seemingly oblivious to his pounding heart beneath her ea
r.

  A bad dream, he echoed her words silently. Yes, of course, that was what he’d just had. Sneaking a quick, spooked glance at the rocky ceiling, Steve realized that was all it could have been. There was nothing above his head but rock, and moss, and a spiderweb.

  Deedee was dead, for chrissake.

  He’d never had a nightmare like that in his life. A waking nightmare. At least, he thought he’d been awake. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he had dreamed the whole thing and only awakened when he had bolted upright.

  Jesus.

  He hadn’t been asleep in front of the boat warehouse.

  Maybe he had a concussion. Maybe, despite his rapidly clearing double vision, his eyes were playing tricks on him in a highly macabre way. Maybe recurring visions of Deedee were going to be his punishment for the rest of his life.

  In the three years since her death, he had never once had a vision of Deedee. If these vividly real images were a kind of punishment, why were they cropping up now?

  Who the hell knew?

  He needed a drink.

  It wasn’t the first time he had felt the fierce craving since he had sworn off alcohol six months ago. What it had done to his mind and his body, to say nothing of his soul, over two and a half years no one would believe. Booze had nearly destroyed him a second time. He’d fought the fight of his life to get off it and stay off it.

  There had been a moment there when he’d been tempted to tell himself that one beer wouldn’t harm him. The grace of God—and Rosencrans’s sarcastic inquiry as to whether he was an alcoholic—was all that had saved him. He’d be battling the craving for booze for the rest of his life, he realized. It was a battle that he meant to win. One rejected beer at a time.

  Settling back down on his less than comfortable bed, rearranging the woman in his arms so that she wasn’t quite strangling him as she slept with her head on his chest and her arms looped around his neck, Steve tried to dismiss what he had seen. He needed to go back to sleep while he had the chance. It had been a hellish forty-eight hours. His mind needed rest to think; his body needed rest to heal.

  When he closed his eyes, he should have been thankful that his worry over what he had or hadn’t seen on the ceiling was quickly replaced. The problem was what replaced it. Lying there trying not to think of anything at all, he found that his mind was beyond his control. His body, too. With every breath he drew, he grew more keenly aware of the gender of the person sprawled across him. Definitely female. Definitely round, curvy, desirable female. Her tits were burning twin holes in his chest.

  With the best will in the world not to do so, Steve recalled how they had looked naked: beautiful, rose-tipped white breasts, so satiny smooth they gleamed in the moonlight. Dolly Partonesque breasts. The stuff-of-male-fantasies breasts.

  Some men liked legs, some men liked asses. He was a breast man, himself.

  He remembered how it had felt to squeeze one.

  Booting the memory from his mind, he concentrated on falling asleep.

  The more he tried not to think about exactly what it was that felt so soft and warm and arousing atop his body, the worse the sensation got.

  He ended up with the first sober hard-on he’d had in three years.

  Steve gritted his teeth and opened his eyes. Since sleep was clearly impossible, the thing to do was think. Work at the puzzle. Try to figure out exactly what was going on, who was behind it, and how he—and she—could get out of it in one piece.

  It was useless, he admitted minutes later. He couldn’t keep his mind off sex. It had been a while since he’d had any, and, physically, the woman in his arms was just the kind he liked: lushly full and feminine.

  This morning he had discovered that she had the softest lips in the world. Lucky he had had enough self-control not to do anything about it.

  Under the circumstances, sex with Rosencrans was a complication his life did not need.

  All at once the back of his neck prickled. He had the distinct sensation that he was being watched. Unable to help himself, he cast a wary glance at the ceiling.

  No Deedee.

  Of course no Deedee. He felt both foolish and foolishly relieved.

  Until he noticed the dog. It was sitting beside their makeshift sleeping bag, its ridiculous beribboned head cocked to one side and its bulging eyes fixed on something behind him.

  Steve turned his head so fast, he damned near cracked his neck.

  From the corner, Deedee waggled her fingers at him.

  Steve gave a hoarse cry and leaped to his feet, woman, quilt, and all.

  She vanished. Deedee vanished. Right before his eyes. Only she didn’t actually vanish, of course, because she’d never really been there in the first place.

  Shaken, Steve glanced at the dog. She had lost interest in whatever had first attracted her attention and was now placidly scratching an ear.

  Damned mutt.

  “Is it time to go?” Rosencrans was awake again. He looked down into sleepy hazel-brown eyes that blinked dazedly up into his, noted the straight nose, the creamy texture of her skin, and the wide, well-remembered softness of her lips. Now that he was getting his vision back he could see that she was a damned attractive woman—no, a damned pretty woman—even dazed, dirty, and disheveled. She was leaning heavily against him, her hands linked behind his neck, letting him support her weight. He felt the shapely warmth of her in his arms, against his body, and found his explanation for the sudden unnerving visions of Deedee.

  They must have been brought on by guilt. Because Rosencrans was the first woman he had wanted, stone-cold sober, since Deedee’s death.

  19

  “We need to get out of here.” Frankenstein’s words were so urgent that they pierced the fog of grogginess that surrounded Summer.

  “Why?” Were the bad guys on their trail? Coming immediately fully awake, she struggled against the quilt that suddenly felt to her like a straitjacket, desperate to be free.

  “Because we need to.” Reaching behind his neck, he unclasped her hands and gave them back to her. Humiliated to discover that she had been clinging to him—clinging to him, of all things—Summer withdrew her hands and her body from all contact with his and busied herself with extracting herself from the quilt.

  He seemed as anxious to be free as she.

  “Is someone coming?” Fear infused her voice and was evident in the quick looks she shot at the mouth of their den. “Did you hear something? See something?”

  “No.” Frankenstein folded the quilt. He opened the gym bag and pulled some things out before stuffing the quilt in.

  “Then what’s going on?” Something in his manner was downright scary. He was cold, impersonal, abrupt, unfriendly. That wasn’t so surprising, but there was something else as well. He almost seemed—afraid. What had happened while she had been asleep, for goodness’ sake?

  “Nothing’s going on. We need to get a move on, is all. Here, put these on. You can’t go around out here in that janitor outfit. You’ll stand out like a sore thumb.”

  Frankenstein stood and thrust a handful of garments at her. His eyes as they met hers were hostile. Summer was bewildered. What was wrong? What had she done?

  Taking the things from him, Summer saw that he had passed her the basketball shorts and muscle shirt.

  “I can’t wear this,” she said, holding up the muscle shirt. Even to a cursory glance, which was all she had given it, it was obvious that the shirt was not made for a woman. Its deep, scooped neckline, narrow straps, and enormous armholes would leave her effectively shirtless from the waist up.

  “What do you mean, you can’t wear it? If the color or something doesn’t suit you, that’s just too bad.”

  Summer got the impression that he was deliberately being as nasty as he could be.

  “It’s not the color, stupid. It’s the way it’s made. See?” She held the shirt up to herself. The hem reached well past her thighs, the bottom two thirds had ample material—but the top, where it counted, was hardly there.
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  Frankenstein’s frown told her that he saw what she meant.

  “Here,” he said, pulling off his own shirt and handing it over. “Trade me.”

  Summer accepted his T-shirt, passed him the muscle shirt, and tried not to look with too much interest at broad shoulders, a well-muscled, hairy chest, and a compact waist with just the faintest suggestion of love handles puddling over the sides of the too snug cutoffs.

  His left shoulder and side might be be abloom with purple-to-yellow bruises, but the underlying body was powerfully built.

  Summer had always been attracted to big, muscular men.

  He pulled the shirt over his head and jerked it into place. The word Nike leaped into prominence across his abdomen. His shoulders and upper chest remained essentially bare. His eyes met hers.

  Lest he somehow manage to read her thoughts in her eyes, Summer averted her gaze.

  “Hurry up, will you?” he said, picking his cap up from the ground and walking outside, taking the gym bag with him. Muffy padded after him.

  Left alone, Summer shed her Daisy Fresh uniform and scrambled into the basketball shorts and T-shirt. The shorts were black, made of flimsy nylon, but fortunately were cut to be baggy and fit her reasonably well, stopping just a few inches shy of her knees. With a quick glance at the entrance to their hideaway, Summer slipped out of her bra and made a hurried, but secure, knot in the strap. Putting it back on, she was pleased to rediscover how it felt to have secure support on both sides.

  “You done yet?” Frankenstein, speaking from just outside the entrance, sounded impatient. Summer dragged the T-shirt over her head. It was a trifle snug over her bosom and hips, but by yanking at the hem she was able to stretch the material enough so that she thought it looked reasonably decent.

  Now if she could only shower, scrub her teeth, and brush her hair …

  “Almost,” she called, combing a hand through her tangled hair, which straggled around her face and down her back. It was as fine and straight as corn silk, and at the moment felt about as limp. Summer wished vainly for fifteen minutes alone with a showerhead, shampoo, a hair dryer, a fat round brush, and some mousse. Her hair might be plain, ordinary brown, but it could look pretty good when she tried.