Exposure

by Susan Andersen

  Then he saw Woodard draw back his arm and direct a vicious swipe to the side of Emma's head. She flopped like a rag doll onto her back in the dirt, and Grant sat up astride her, reaching for her throat.

  Rage exploded in Elvis' chest. "Woodard!" he roared. Then he coldly and concisely shoved the fury aside, knowing it for what it was—counterproductive. Bragston had taught him not to let his emotions get in the way. They were always going to be there, the old sheriff had counseled; but the trick was to learn to function through them. It had been a difficult lesson to learn, but ultimately Elvis had mastered it because Bragston had expected him to.

  He raised the rifle to his shoulder to squeeze off a shot.

  * * * * *

  Looking into Grant's face, Emma knew she'd better do something and fast. His expression as he glared down at her was completely feral and he was obviously beyond rational thought. His hands wrapped around her throat.

  Her own hands tingled with a pins-and-needles sensation, but she used one to dig desperately at a rock half submerged in the hardpan soil and wrapped the other around a bristly clump of tall grass, pulling it this way and that, trying to rock it loose. She could feel his fingers tightening around her throat, cutting off her air.

  The chunk of grass suddenly ripped free, trailing clods of dirt and she flung it in Grant's face just as lights began to explode in the forefront of her rapidly darkening vision. Simultaneously, she brought her knee up in a weak but vengeful attempt to unman him.

  The knee rammed his buttock instead of the intended target, but it shoved him off balance at least; and dirt from the grass got in his eyes, momentarily blinding him. He had to turn her loose to keep from tipping over onto his head in the rocky soil, and gasping and sucking in great draughts of air, she took advantage of the situation by ramming stiffened fingers into his throat. He gagged, and she gave him a mighty shove that rolled him off her.

  She heard a lightninglike crack as she rolled out from under him, but didn't have time to worry about, never mind seek out, its source. Coughing, scrambling away from Woodard on her hands and feet, she struggled to become erect and run. She made it to her feet, but then Grant's hand clamped around her ankle and jerked. She went back down, the palms she'd thrust out to catch her fall skidding along the rough, scrub-grass dotted terrain. Tears sprang to her eyes, blurring her vision. Donkey-kicking back with her free foot, she got a spurt of satisfaction when she heard his grunt of pain. The fingers around her ankle loosened and she jerked it free, scrambling to her feet once again.

  She only made it a few steps before his arms wrapped around her from behind, yanking her back against his chest, lifting her off her feet. All her senses were heightened, and she was aware of the wheezing rattle of his breath, of the litany of obscene words he muttered in her ear. She fought desperately to free herself, but his grip was unrelenting. Slowly she grew still, her lungs heaving as she fought to catch her breath.

  He cautiously lowered her, allowing her feet to touch the ground to support some of her weight. He wasn't taking any chances, however. He kept her back arched and her balance skewed by wrapping one arm around her neck and the other around her waist. One false move and he'd jerk her off her toes again.

  "I should just break your fuckin' neck here and now and save myself a lot of trouble," he rasped in her ear.

  "Oui? " she goaded. "Why don't you just do it then, you sick son of a bitch?" Then her head shot up, cracking him in the mouth, as the sound of Elvis' voice came across the plateau.

  "Woodard!" he shouted, and Emma located him over by Grant's car. He was moving inexorably nearer. "Let her go, Woodard," he commanded, sighting at them down a rifle barrel. "Let her go and you can walk away from this with your life."

  "Stay where you are!" Grant yelled and shuffled Emma a few feet backward.

  "I can't do that." Elvis nevertheless paused. Emma and Woodard were too close to the edge, and he didn't want to risk spooking the man into doing something rash. Grant looked about a nudge away from the need for a straitjacket. "Let her go, man, or I'm going to put a bullet right through your forehead. And let me tell you, Woodard, while life in stir might not sound like a lot of fun, it's preferable to being dead."

  Grant glanced quickly over his shoulder at the cliff a couple of feet behind him. Then he looked back at the sheriff, who was nearer than he'd been a moment ago. "You're wrong," he said, thinking of everything that had gone sour since that day in May. "It isn't."

  And he took a giant step backward, going over the cliff.

  Chapter 21

  "NO!" Elvis dropped the rifle and sprinted for the cliff's edge. That one word was the last sound Grant heard as he plummeted into space, and he experienced a hot, savage rush of satisfaction at having robbed the scar-faced cripple of his heart's desire. If he was going, then so, by God, was Emma. No one betrayed Grant Woodard and lived to tell about it.

  Emma's hard head snapped back and broke his nose, and her sharp elbow viciously jabbed ribs. He regretted the reflex that made him lose his grip on her.

  Then he knew only terror as he plummeted silently to the rocks below.

  Emma propelled herself away from Grant's body and managed to catch onto a piece of the cliff's rim.

  Ah, Dieu, thank you. Terra firma beneath her instead of a free fall through space; she would have gladly kissed it. But it was too soon to pay homage—she had only a tenuous grip on it, hardly more than her bare elbows digging desperately into the hard ground.

  She thrust her arms forward, grabbed onto clumps of the sharp-bladed, tough grass, and tried to pull herself up over the brink. Her torso hung free, her legs kicking in air.

  Hand over hand she pulled herself up, digging her elbows in and using them for additional leverage until she had firm earth beneath her stomach. With every movement she made, dirt crumbled from the edge of the cliff and dropped away.

  "Emma! Hold still!" She raised her eyes to see Elvis drop onto his stomach and crawl toward her. "The cliff's undercut here," he said, using his own elbows to propel himself nearer to the edge. "I know it's easier said than done, sweetheart, but don't struggle, okay? Just hang on ... and try not to do anything that'll generate pressure against the fault."

  She looked ahead of her and saw what he had seen—a ragged fissure in the ground perpendicular to her dangling body. She froze, except for her hands, which gripped with even more desperation the dried clumps of grass less than an arm's length beyond the crack. As her fingers assumed a death grip, she regretted her knowledge of physics, understanding even as she hung on that if the chunk of overhang supporting her weight were to suddenly drop away, her puny grip wasn't going to do a damn thing to prevent her from dropping onto the rocks below.

  Suddenly, the undermined section of cliff did exactly that. With a soft rumble, a huge section of sod and scrub brush fell out from beneath her, and her one hundred twenty-seven pounds dropped like a sack of wet cement on the end of a string. Long blades of grass ripped through her clutching hands. Clawing frantically for an alternate grip, Emma was aware that her weight was dragging her toward oblivion faster than her hands could find purchase on protruding roots or rocks. Then there was nothing left to grab for and she was sliding into space.

  To be yanked to an abrupt halt by a hard grasp on her left forearm.

  She screamed as the ball joint of her shoulder was wrenched in its socket. Dangling now, she made the mistake of looking at the jagged boulders far below, and adrenaline shot through her. Her abused throat involuntarily loosed an entire series of rusty squawks, the pressure behind her eyes made them bulge as she stared down at the surf lapping at the craggy shore, and she barely controlled her legs' desperate desire to kick, to outrun danger.

  "Emma!" Elvis roared. "Look at me—at me, sweetheart! Yes, like that. Good, good girl . . . look right into my eyes." He held her panicked brown gaze. "Grab onto my hook, now," he commanded, extending it to her. She made one grab for it and missed; then he saw determination replace the panic on her face a
nd she reached out again and this time connected. A measure of pain faded from her expression once her right arm had taken up some of the drag threatening to dislocate her left shoulder.

  Elvis started inching along backward on his stomach. Dirt and pebbles and clumps of weed and grass, weakened by their activity, continued to crumble away from the cliff's edge and fall into space, but he took his time, stayed flat, kept his weight evenly distributed on the unstable ground, and little by little dragged Emma up over the verge.

  The ragged edge of the cliff scraped the soft inner skin of her upper arms, flattened her breasts, dragged her blouse from her waistband and ripped it free of its buttons, abrading the tender skin from her abdomen and chest. Embedded rocks raked her thighs, her knees, her ankles.

  Elvis continued to pull her on her stomach across the rocky ground long after she'd cleared the brim. Finally, they were at a distance he considered safe, and he rocked back onto his heels, knees spraddled wide, to pull Emma into his arms. The sounds of the surf, the seagulls' mocking screams, were drowned beneath the harsh, sawing gasps of their combined breathing.

  "Sweet mother of God, I pray to heaven never to go through anything like that again," he panted hoarsely, his good hand roughly stroking her hair as he rocked them both back and forth, back and forth. "Oh, Christ, Emma, I was so gut-screaming scared—I thought I'd lost you." Pulling on her hair until he could see her face, he shook her once, suddenly furious. "And how the hell would I have explained that to Gracie, huh? You just tell me how the hell—"

  The words clogged into a hot ball in his throat. Wrapping his big hand around the back of her head, he pushed her face into its niche in his shoulder again, and his arms tightened around her convulsively. He recommenced rocking them, whispering swear words, words of thanks. Emma clung to him mindlessly.

  Finally, she pushed back and looked into his face. Her hands stroked his cheeks, his jaw; they smoothed his hair into place. "It's over," she said, and it wasn't until the words were spoken that it abruptly sank in. Her voice was all froggy and hoarse from the abuse to her vocal cords, but still, wonderment colored her tone when she repeated, "It's really all over, cher. He is dead, don't you think? I mean, he's got to be; nobody could survive that fall."

  "Yeah, he's dead." Elvis would be amazed if anyone lived through a dive onto those rocks, but he wanted to be on the safe side. "I'll send for a search party to recover his body as soon as we get back to the Suburban."

  "I can quit looking over my shoulder, Elvis," Emma marveled. "And finally put Gracie into a program with other kids her own age. Oh, merde!" she exclaimed and climbed to her feet. "Gracie!" She looked down at him, still kneeling at her feet, staring back up at her. "Mon Dieu, Elvis, we've got to let Gracie know everything is okay."

  * * * * *

  "When's Maman comin'?" Gracie asked for the twentieth time. Her head rested on Clare's breast as she sat quietly in the woman's lap, but Clare knew better than to trust in the duration of this current quiescence. Gracie's moods had been fluctuating, going from one end of the spectrum to the other at about thirty-second intervals.

  Clare stroked the child's soft hair. "Soon, Grace Melina," she replied soothingly, and pressed a kiss into the child's baby-fragrant curls. "She and your daddy-to-be are gonna be here real soon." Oh, please, God, if You're listening, don't let me be lying to this child.

  "Mommy and Elbis gon' be here weal soon," Gracie agreed. She tipped her head back in order to see into Clare's face. "When, you think?"

  "Soon."

  The other department Suburban pulled up behind them then, and Clare turned off the engine she'd been running in order to use the air conditioner. Watching Ben climb out, she glanced down at Gracie before opening the car door, wondering if the necessary explanations were going to upset her all over again.

  Well, there was no help for it if they did; hiking Gracie into her arms, she got out of the car and went to greet the deputy.

  They met by the bumper of her car, but before two words were exchanged, Gracie had started bouncing in Clare's arms. "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" she screamed, straining to the right with her arms extended. Clare's head whipped around and she sagged at the knees to see Emma and Elvis emerging out of the shaded drive.

  Emma broke into an awkward trot at the sound of her daughter's voice. Moments later, dirty, disheveled, scraped and bruised, she had Gracie in her arms, holding her tightly and being squeezed in return by sturdy little arms and legs. She looked at Clare and laughed, a tremulous sound that verged on tears. Freeing an arm, she wrapped it around her friend and pulled her into the embrace. "Thank you," she whispered. "Ah, mon ami, merci beaucoup."

  "Oh God, Emma, I'm so grateful you're safe!" Relief, like fine wine, sang in Clare's veins. She wiped her cheeks free of the tears that kept falling. "So grateful." Then the two women and the child simply stood for some moments in a three-way hug, each temporarily content not to move or speak.

  Elvis observed the blissful expressions on the faces of his woman and his child and smiled to himself. Stroking Gracie's head from crown to nape, he pressed a kiss on her brow and then walked over to talk to his deputy. He needed to begin the process that would recover Grant Woodard's body and put this mess behind them once and for all.

  He talked to Ben and issued orders to Sandy via the car radio for quite a while. He behaved with consummate professionalism, but he could not prevent his eyes from frequently seeking out Emma and Gracie. He'd come too damn close to losing Emma this afternoon, and he needed constant affirmation that she was all right. Discussing the events of the past twenty minutes with his deputy, he watched as Emma bent her head to whisper in Gracie's ear. Then he saw his daughter-to-be's head snap up, a smile like dawn breaking over the horizon spreading across her face. She craned around, obviously searching for him.

  "Elbis, Elbis, guess what?" she squealed when she spotted him. "Maman says I getta stawt goin' to sunny school!"

  * * * * *

  "Don't get mad at me," Elvis ordered Emma as he came through the kitchen door after work on Tuesday night. "But I invited Ben and George and Sandy to the wedding." Gracie, who had run to greet him in the yard, was hanging from his neck piggyback style, and her grip, where she'd locked one small hand over the opposite wrist, was centered right on top of his Adam's apple. He paused, boosted her up his back until he could swallow freely again, and then confessed, "And ... uh ... their families, too." Emma turned from the stove to stare at him, and he gave her a sheepish look. "They really seemed to want to come, Em."

  Emma suspected it had probably amazed the heck out of him, too. He'd spent too much time believing he was at best only tolerated on this island. "What's a few more people?" she demanded with a good-natured shrug. "Gracie invited her new best friend, too."

  "Sawah!" Gracie contributed, specifying the little girl she'd met on Sunday at the Seaside Baptist Church for all the world as if she hadn't been talking about Sarah nearly nonstop for four days straight.

  "Right," Emma acknowledged. "And, Elvis, you're the one who insisted on a three-tiered wedding cake, so it's not as if we won't have enough to go around. You might want to pick up another bottle of champagne and maybe a few bottles of sparkling cider for the kids, though. Oh, and reserve more chairs from the Rent-It shop."

  He leaned over to kiss her neck, then reached around her and lifted the lid off the pot to see what she was cooking. Jambalaya. No wonder it smelled wonderful. "I'll go after dinner," he agreed. "Come on, kid," he said over his shoulder to Gracie, "let's go get washed up."

  "Okeydokey."

  Heading for the doorway with Gracie still riding his back, Elvis paused to look back at Emma. "I promise, Em," he vowed. "I'll take care of every thing first thing after we've eaten. I'm not going to leave this for you to arrange, too."

  Emma laughed softly. She wasn't worried.

  * * * * *

  It was two days before their wedding, and she felt as if she'd never worry about anything ever again.

  The logical
part of Emma tried to tell her it wasn't possible to be free of all anxiety. One simply wasn't allowed to get through life without worries, be they large or small. But her emotional side merely shrugged. Sure, matters were bound to crop up in her life that would give her some sleepless nights. But she certainly wasn't going to waste any of her precious time sweatin' the small stuff. Not anymore.

  It wasn't that long ago she'd been unable to envision a future for herself and Gracie, no matter how much effort she'd put into trying to find something workable. She hadn't been able to foresee a time for them, pure and simple, that didn't include constantly moving from one place to the next, of living their lives in the shadows. Now they had everything.

  Never, never, never, get smug, she decided caustically forty-five minutes later. Just look where it gets you. She was now the proud owner of an additional something, a situation she hadn't foreseen and sure as heck didn't want.

  She was replacing the telephone receiver just as Elvis and Gracie came through the kitchen door. "Em?" Elvis called out, and Gracie raced ahead of him into the living room, where her mother was sitting in the overstuffed chair with its new green- and white-striped slipcover.

  "Dawk in here," Gracie observed and climbed up on the couch to turn on the lamp. "There!" she declared in satisfaction when a pool of light illuminated the area, including her mother's pale face. "Tha's bettoo!" She slid down the couch back, bounced on the cushion, and then climbed down and trotted off to her room.

  Elvis stood in the doorway, staring at Emma's white face. "What is it?" he demanded, crossing the room to her. He scooped her out of the chair, dropped into it himself, and rearranged her on his lap. Unease crawled through his stomach. "Jesus, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

  "Do you think I'm unnatural for not feeling remorse over Grant's death?" she asked him. "I mean, it is kind of abnormal, isn't it? I lived with him for several years, after all, and up until a few months ago I thought he'd been so good to me. Hell, sugar, I thought I loved him." She clutched his shirt and stared up at him. "But in the end I hated him, and I'm not sorry he's dead, Elvis—I'm relieved."