His lips tightening, he snatched up his clothes that had been scattered carelessly over the floor and began to dress. Carly rolled over and opened her eyes. "Good morning." Her voice, low and sultry, strummed across his nerves, and her smile kindled the embers of desire.
"Good morning," he snapped back, fighting the need that swelled inside him. "Get dressed. I can't believe that we did this. I can't believe I allowed myself to forget what I was supposed to do."
Her smile faded as she sat up. When the blanket slipped off her shoulders, she grabbed for it and pulled it up to cover her breasts. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" The words exploded out of him. "We're hiding in a cave, trying to escape from a murderer, and how did we spend the night? We sure as hell weren't doing what we should have been doing."
"And what was that?" She reached for her clothes, but didn't take her eyes off him.
"We should have been watching, making sure that Phil wasn't out there. We should have been sleeping, so we could start walking as soon as it got light. We should have been out of here hours ago."
"I thought you said no one knew about this cave besides you and Shea."
"It doesn't matter how many people know about this cave. Once we leave here, we have to walk across a lot of open ground before we'll have any cover again. And Phil Hilbert is no fool. He knows that you're up here somewhere. He's probably just waiting for us to show our faces. We've lost the advantage of surprise."
"I'm sorry," she said as she buttoned her blouse and pulled on her jeans. "I'm ready to go."
"Hell, it's not your fault." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm the one who should have known better." Anger at himself rose inside him. "I was a damn fool. Let's go."
She followed him out of the cave without saying a thing. The sunlight stabbed at his eyes, and he saw that she was squinting, too. He waited for a few moments to let their eyes adjust to the light, then he started down the side of the cliff. When he got to the bottom, he held up his arms and lifted Carly down. She stepped away as soon as her feet touched the ground.
Slinging her backpack over her shoulder, she gave him a tight nod. "I'm ready."
* * *
Chapter 16
«^»
Carly didn't say a thing as they walked through the rock debris at the base of the cliffs. Instead of heading directly across the valley, toward the cabin and the road, they stayed in the shadow of the cliffs. There was at least a small chance they would blend into the rocks. Walking across the valley, they would stand out like a pair of elephants in downtown Cameron.
She was being a real trouper, he thought, glancing back over his shoulder at Carly. She was keeping up with him, and not once had she complained about being hungry or thirsty. They'd each drank one of her cans of pop and split her last candy bar, but he was already thirsty again. And he knew that she had to be even more thirsty and hungry. She'd run a couple of miles across rugged mountain terrain with a killer on her heels.
"We'll get to a spring in a few minutes," he said gruffly. "We're high enough in the mountains that the water is safe to drink."
"Good."
Her face was already red, and he watched her with concern. "Do you have any sunblock in that bag of yours?"
She shook her head. "I hadn't planned this little side trip through the mountains." Beneath the simmering anger in her eyes he saw a shadow of pain.
"Carly, what's wrong?"
Her eyes flashed as she finally looked at him. "Does it matter?"
"Of course it matters!"
She opened her mouth to answer, then snapped it shut. "The only thing that matters right now is getting out of here alive," she said wearily. "I thought we were supposed to be paying attention and watching for Phil."
She was right. Cursing himself, he turned around and tried to ignore the hurt on her face. He had been too abrupt this morning, in too much of a hurry to get moving. He wanted to apologize, to explain why he'd been so angry at himself, but they didn't have the time.
There would be plenty of time for talking when they were safely back at the Red Rock, when Phil Hilbert was in custody. Until then, his number one concern was Carly's safety. And if she didn't understand that, he didn't have the time right now to explain it to her.
They walked through a narrow opening in the rock and were finally out of sight of the valley that held the cabin and the cave. He took a deep breath and looked around. There was more cover here, and they were less likely to be surprised. "Wait a minute, Carly. I want to radio Ben and tell him where we are."
She stopped walking and sat down on a rock as he pulled his radio out of his belt. He'd turned it off, afraid that it would crackle to life unexpectedly. Sound carried a long way in the thin mountain air, and he didn't want to broadcast their presence.
"Hey, Marge," he said quietly into the handset. "Is Ben around?"
"He's right here."
"Are you all right?" Ben's first words revealed his concern.
"I'm fine and so is Carly. Phil Hilbert is our man. Send someone out to his ranch to pick him up, although I doubt if he's there. Carly managed to get away from him in the mountains behind the Red Rock, and now we're hiking out. We'll be roughly following the trail that leads up to the cabin. Radio me when you're getting close, and I'll tell you exactly where to find us."
"Right." Ben paused. "How many men do you want me to bring?"
"Round up as many of the deputies as you can. I think Phil is still somewhere up here, and I want to roust him out."
"Will do. I'll take care of sending someone to his ranch, then I'll be on my way."
"Thanks, Ben." Dev hesitated. "Tell whoever goes to his ranch to be careful and not do anything stupid. It sounds like Phil is on the edge, and I don't want anyone to get hurt."
There was a pause on the other end of the radio, then Ben said, "I'll go there myself on my way to your place."
"Good. I'll expect to hear from you in another couple of hours."
He turned off the radio and replaced it in his belt, then turned to Carly. "We're going to stay close to the road, because that's the quickest way back to the ranch. But there's a stream not too far from here. There isn't a lot of water in it this time of year, but it's clean and it's cold. We both need some water."
She nodded and stood up, slinging her pack over her shoulder again. Her movements looked slow and painful, and for the first time he noticed the dried blood and fresh bruises on her hands and arms.
"My God, Carly, what happened to you?" He grabbed one of her arms and stared at her injuries.
She looked down, then shrugged. "That must have happened when I was trying to get away from Phil. I climbed up and down a bunch of rocks, and I must have scraped myself up."
"You should have washed these last night."
She pulled her arm away from him. "With what? Soda? I didn't even think about first aid for a bunch of minor scratches. Last night I was more concerned about staying alive."
"You should have told me you were hurt."
She lifted her gaze and held his steadily. "At what point would that have been? While we were making love? Or this morning, after we woke up and you wouldn't even look me in the eye? I don't think so, Devlin."
"Look, Carly, I know you're upset about the way I acted this morning. But I was angry at myself because I hadn't been doing my job. My only thought last night should have been getting us back to the ranch safely. But I wasn't paying any attention to what was going on outside the door of that cave."
Her chin lifted and her eyes shot sparks of anger at him. "Don't try to make excuses. We shared something in that cave last night, something important. You're angry because you were vulnerable. You let down your barriers, opened yourself to me, and you couldn't stand that. You showed me that you needed me as much as I needed you, and that appalled you in the light of day."
He opened his mouth, ready to hotly deny her accusations, but something stopped him. Maybe there was a grain of truth in what she said. Maybe he wa
s angry that she'd managed to break down the barriers around his heart. He'd known that the chances of Phil finding them in the cave were remote. But instead of facing the truth about himself, he'd chosen to focus on his job instead.
He couldn't afford to take the time to make it right with Carly now. "We'll talk about it once you're safe," he said, looking around. "I'm not going to stand here and discuss our 'relationship' while there's a murderer looking for you. Let's go."
"You were right, weren't you?" she said, her voice almost a whisper in the dry air. "You aren't interested in any relationships. I thought I'd ruined things, by not telling you the truth. But I couldn't ruin what was never there in the first place. If I hadn't lied to you, there would have been some other reason why a relationship between us wouldn't work. I should have listened to you when you told me there could be nothing between us."
"Dammit, Carly, this isn't the place to be having this discussion." He grabbed for his reason, because it felt like his heart was slipping away.
"I suspect that there never will be the right place or time to have this discussion. So we might as well have it now." She angled her chin higher. "Don't worry, Dev. I won't make any claims on you. I'll admit that I should have told you sooner who I was. I wish I had told you sooner. Keeping my identity from you was wrong, but at least I told you what I'd done and asked you to forgive me. And that was the perfect excuse for you, wasn't it? I played right into your hands. I gave you a reason for pushing me away, and you grabbed onto it with both hands. I felt horrible about it, but now I know that if I hadn't told you that lie, you would have found something else."
"That's not true, Carly." But he had a sickening feeling that she had read him perfectly. He'd been trying to push her away from the first day she'd driven into Cameron. And this morning, after they'd made love in the cave, he'd been even more desperate to get away from her. Because he'd felt himself falling more and more deeply in love with her, and it scared the hell out of him.
Her eyes darkened with regret and sorrow. Then she picked up her backpack and shrugged it onto her shoulders. "You can tell yourself whatever you want, Dev. But you're right. It's time to go. Let's find that water."
He wanted to stop her, to tell her that she was wrong, but he realized that she wasn't. And they didn't have the time to resolve things now. Phil Hilbert could be anywhere.
"This discussion isn't over," he warned her.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. "It is as far as I'm concerned."
"Come on," he said brusquely. "We both need water, and your arms need tending."
Neither of them spoke as they hiked over the loose stone. The morning sun beat down on them, heating the rock cliffs that rose next to them. Carly's face was getting redder, and he wished he had a hat for her to wear. But she didn't say a thing. She just kept walking, even though he saw her stumble once or twice.
Finally they reached the small stream that tumbled down the mountain. Carly threw her pack next to one of the mesquite bushes that lined the stream, then knelt next to the water. She splashed her face repeatedly, then let the cold water run over her arms and hands.
She looked over at him. "Are you sure it's safe to drink from the stream? I've never done that before."
"There aren't too many places left where it's safe to drink the water without treating it first. But this is one of them. The water is from snow runoff, high in the mountains. There isn't much of a stream left by this time of year, but it's not polluted. Go ahead and drink."
She cupped her hands and brought the water hesitantly to her mouth. Once she started to drink, she drank for a long time. He drank all he could hold, then filled the two pop cans he'd saved.
"This won't be much, but it'll be something. We'll get thirsty again before we get back to the ranch.
"I don't think you're going to have to worry about being thirsty," a voice said behind them.
He spun around to face Phil Hilbert, who was holding a shot-gun steadily on them. The older man smiled, his eyes glittering with triumph. "I figured you'd stop here on your way down the mountain. It's the only water around." His smile twisted into a slash of anger. "I should know. Your father guarded this stream like a miser with a stash of gold."
"It was his property and his stream," Devlin answered, his eyes on the gun. "That was his right."
"Right, hell. I needed that water." Hilbert smiled again, a sly grin this time. "And I got the best of your father in the long run. He had no idea that I was diverting this stream."
"But Edmund Whitmore knew, didn't he?"
Carly's voice was confident behind him, and Devlin moved over to put himself between her and the shotgun.
"Don't move, McAllister," Phil said sharply. "I like you just where you are. I have a nice, clear target in either of you."
"Edmund Whitmore knew, didn't he, Phil?" Carly asked again.
Phil's face turned an ugly red. "I found him up here, snooping around where he didn't belong. He managed to find the place where I was diverting the water, and he was writing in that damned notebook of his. He promised not to tell anyone, but I knew better than that. He was as bad as his damned father, always sticking his nose in where he didn't belong."
"Why did you kill him, Phil? Was water more important than a boy's life?" Carly asked.
"Hell, yes." He gave her a scornful look. "You're from the city. You have no idea what it's like to live out here. If you don't have water, you don't survive."
"You have a stream on your ranch. I saw it."
"That stream is hardly more than a puddle of spit. It couldn't sustain the number of cattle I wanted to raise."
"Then maybe you should have tried to raise fewer cattle."
"You mind your own business, city girl." Phil's face became hard and implacable. "You shouldn't have stuck your nose in here, either."
"You're wrong about that." Carly stepped closer to Phil, and Dev wanted to push her back. But he was afraid that if he made any sudden moves, Phil would fire the gun.
"I have every right to stick my nose into this. Edmund Whitmore was my brother."
She paused, and Devlin watched Phil narrow his eyes. "The hell you are."
"Surely you remember that Edmund had a sister. My mother and I left town after Edmund was killed, but I never forgot my brother."
Out of the corner of his eye, Dev saw Carly close her hand around the velvet cord she wore around her neck. "My brother gave me something right before he died. It was the last thing he ever gave me." Slowly she pulled the key out from beneath her blouse. "This is the key to his special box, the box where he kept his notebooks and his stories. I found it in the basement of the Weekly Sentinel office yesterday.
"Do you know what was in it, Phil?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "All the stories he'd written about the water rights fight you had with Dev's father. All the research that he'd done. And all the proof that you'd been diverting water all along."
This time Carly smiled, and Dev reached out to grab her. "Don't, Carly."
She paid no attention to him. "Those papers are now in Dev's office. If we're killed, Dev's deputies are going to know who did it."
"You're lying," Phil snarled, but Dev thought he looked worried. "You've got the papers with you in that backpack." He gestured to the backpack with the shotgun.
"I have copies in the pack," she said. "Go ahead and look."
"Don't worry. I'll have plenty of time for that later."
A chill passed over Devlin and he tried to distract Phil. "That shotgun looks familiar, Hilbert."
Phil looked over at him and sneered. "It should, McAllister. It's the Parker 28 gauge that you were careless enough to lose for your father."
"I didn't lose anything. It looks to me like you stole that gun."
"I prefer to think of it as borrowing." He smiled at them. "Actually, I was quite proud of my foresight. One day I arrived at your ranch and there was no one around. I walked into the house and saw the gun case was unlocked. No one but your father had
a 28-gauge shotgun around here, so I threw it in my truck. I thought it might come in handy later. And I was right."
His smile grew even wider. "But don't worry, your family will get it back. It'll be found next to your bodies after you use it to kill Ms. Fitzpatrick, then yourself. And everyone will know, then, that it was your family all along who was responsible for the Whitmore boy's murder."
"You're forgetting the papers that are in my office," Devlin said, glancing over at Carly. She was staring at Phil.
"Circumstantial evidence. After you're found with the gun, those papers won't mean diddly."
"We'll see." His voice was noncommittal. He didn't want to make Phil lose his temper. Then any advantage he and Carly had would be lost. "I suppose you killed that drifter who was found at the bottom of a cliff on the Red Rock with his neck broken."
"I thought that was very clever, myself," Phil said smugly. "I had relied on Bert Pickens to ignore the murder, saying it must have been an accident, but old Bert got stubborn on me. So I found a drifter who was wandering through the area, and he suddenly became Bert's number one suspect. I thought it tied together the loose ends very nicely."
Dev looked over at Carly, and saw that she was beginning to sway on her feet with the effort to remain completely still in the hot sun. When she caught his eye the next time she swayed, he gave her an infinitesimal nod of approval. He saw the understanding in her eyes.
A moment later she swayed again, nearly falling to the ground. Devlin leaped to catch her. While he bent over her, he whispered, "I'm going to try and distract him. You see if you can slip behind one of those mesquite bushes. If you're out of his sight, you'll be able to get away."
She squeezed his hand to let him know she'd heard. Dev turned to Phil. "I'm going to set her down on one of the rocks over by the stream. She's weak from running through the mountains yesterday. She needs to drink more water."
COWBOY WITH A BADGE Page 22
