Daredevil's Run (The Taken Book 2)

by Kathleen Creighton

  “You calling me Matthew—that’s what I was smiling at,” he said. “You’re the third person to do that—my mom and Alex do, too. Funny, though—only when they’re mad a me.”

  “Why do you think Southern women always give their kids two names? One syllable just won’t do it when you need to chew somebody out. You need at least three—what’s your middle name, by the way?”

  “None of your business,” said Matt.

  “James,” said Cory from the backseat. “It’s Matthew James Callahan.”

  “Rat,” Matt muttered.

  “Okay,” Sam crowed. “Matthew James, you are an idiot. What’s with this need business? Don’t you know, there’s all kinds of ways to need somebody? ’Course Alex doesn’t need you to support her or take care of her—what woman does? I sure don’t need Pearse to support me—doesn’t mean I don’t need him about like I need my next breath. I need him because I like having him around, and without him I’m not a happy woman. I need him because he knows just where to rub my neck when it’s stiff, and how to make me laugh, and a million other things besides. And I bet you Alex needs you in all kinds of ways she hasn’t even thought of yet.”

  “So, go yell at her, then. She’s the one who thinks she’s an island, not me.”

  Sam lifted her hands and let them drop into her lap. “Well, I would have, if you hadn’t been in such a hurry to hightail it outa Dodge.”

  “Look,” Matt said, using the kind of patient tone he might have employed to explain something to one of his less-than-brilliant students, “I am not the one with the problem here. I know perfectly well how much I need her, but it kind of has to be a two-way street, you know what I mean? When one person does all the needing, then…hell, he’s just needy. And that’s not me. You understand? I can’t be that guy. Not for Alex, not for anyone.”

  When she didn’t reply, he glanced over at her and saw she was looking thoughtful. Confident he’d won the argument, finally, he turned his full attention to driving, as the freeway section of the highway ended and the winding Kern River Canyon road began.

  A few minutes later, Samantha, peering out the side window at the deep drop into the canyon below, uttered an extremely colorful blasphemy, followed by, “Would you look at this road?”

  “Yeah, helluva pretty river, isn’t it?” Matt said, and smiled, even though his heart was aching. “I hope you guys don’t get carsick.”

  Alex was frustrated. She hadn’t been able to make good time going around the lake, due to the usual crush of boating and camping traffic and the abundance of idiots who seemed to enjoy those recreational pursuits. Her only comfort came in knowing Matt wouldn’t have been able to go any faster than she did. Now, though, past the town of Isabella and on the freeway section of the canyon road where she’d planned to put the pedal to the metal and make up for lost time, she was being dogged by a car that, from a distance in her rearview mirror, looked suspiciously like a CHP SUV. She watched it, keeping within seven or eight miles of the speed limit and tapping her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, until it edged up beside her. Damn—just the friggin’ Forest Service. She stepped on the gas and in a few moments had left the SUV far behind.

  But now…here was another vehicle looming in her mirror, and this one was coming fast. Jeez! Coming like a bat outa hell.

  Instinctively, Alex eased up on the gas as she watched the other car zoom up behind her, then pull out to pass. She didn’t have much time to look as the car streaked by, but what she saw made her gasp. It was Eve’s Jeep. No mistaking that bright Day-Glo yellow. And Eve at the wheel, so intent on the road ahead she didn’t even glance over as she accelerated around Alex’s SUV.

  Alex felt herself go cold clear through. Her heart began to pound as she watched the familiar yellow Jeep disappear around a wide sweeping curve ahead. Gripped by a fear for which there was no concrete explanation, only a notion that something bad was about to happen, she flexed her fingers on the wheel, pressed down on the gas and followed.

  Chapter 10

  “We’ve got some pretty hairy roads in the Smokies,” Sam said, “but I mean to tell you, I have not ever seen anything like this.” She tore her fascinated gaze away from the rocky gorge flashing by only a couple of yards from the side of the van and turned to address her husband in the backseat. “Pearse, you don’t know what you’re missing. I swear, you need to—” She broke off as she caught a glimpse of the yellow Jeep careening around the bend in the road behind them, practically on their bumper. “Oh my Lord, now what is this guy doing? Matt—”

  “I see him,” Matt said, flicking a calm glance at the rearview mirror. “It’s a her, actually. In fact, I know her. She works for Alex. You’ve met her. Eve…the tall blonde?”

  “You’re right—what on earth do you suppose—oh jeez!” She gave a squawk and instinctively threw up her arm as the Jeep accelerated suddenly, coming straight at them. There was a loud bang and a jolt that made her head snap back, and her heart dropped into her stomach. “Matt, what—Did she just ram us? Is she crazy?”

  “I think she might be.” Matt was busy controlling the van, which was careening dangerously close to the edge of the drop-off. He glanced up at the mirror. “Here she comes again—hang on.” And he hit the gas.

  Too scared now to swear, Sam jerked around in her seat to face front and settled her seat belt more securely across her chest. “Pearse,” she yelled, “wake up! Are you buckled in?”

  “Of course,” came his reply, sounding groggy. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “A crazy woman’s trying to force us off the road,” Matt said. His lips were stretched in a grim smile.

  It was odd, how calm he felt. Somewhere in his body, he knew, adrenaline had shifted everything into high gear, but he felt none of it. In fact, everything—heartbeat, breathing, all movement—seemed to be happening in slow motion.

  Oh so slowly, he lifted his eyes to the mirror…saw the Jeep coming, closing the distance…slowly, slowly. Saw it veer—but slowly—out into the oncoming lane. He had all the time in the world to deduce what the woman’s intent was, to know that this time, rather than ram him from the rear, she meant to swerve at him from the side and force him over the bank. And he was ready for her, knew just what he had to do. His hands were steady on the controls, ready to apply the brakes the instant she swerved toward him.

  He saw the car coming toward them from the other direction, and that was in slow motion, too.

  There was a screeching of brakes and his body strained forward against a seat belt gone rigid across his chest. As he stared through the windshield, dazed, the slow-motion spell broke. In a blink, almost too fast for the eye to follow, the Jeep swerved out of the path of the oncoming car and continued on, out of control, across the lane in front of his van to plunge, with a terrible screeching of tires and metal, over the side and into the river gorge.

  Alex had managed to keep the yellow Jeep in sight, at some risk to life and limb. She saw it closing on the blue van traveling at a much saner pace, and the cold feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach spread through her entire body when she recognized the van as Matt’s. What was Eve thinking? What was she doing?

  Dear God, Alex thought, she’s going to cause an accident.

  Around a few more curves…and she realized that was exactly what Eve was trying to do. Her heart was racing so fast it hurt; she drove hunched over the wheel, eyes burning as she stared at the drama playing out on the road ahead, little whimpering sounds coming from her throat. And once again there was nothing she could do. Nothing.

  She could only watch and utter an unconscious shriek of horror as the Jeep suddenly accelerated and rammed into the back of the van. She sobbed with relief when the van swerved and wobbled back and forth, then regained control, and realized only then that she was muttering aloud, over and over, “Hold on, Mattie, hold on, Mattie, hold on….”

  The Jeep seemed to gather itself…and lunged forward once more, but into the oncoming lane, this tim
e, moving up alongside the van.

  And what came next happened so fast, Alex couldn’t even process it until it was done. The flash of a car coming around a bend from the other direction. The Jeep swerving hard to the left. The van screeching to a halt, tires sending up puffs of smoke from burned rubber. The Jeep becoming a yellow streak that crossed in front of the van and disappeared.

  Then the sounds. The whoosh of a car zooming by and continuing on down the winding road, its driver probably cussing the idiot in the yellow Jeep and oblivious to what was happening now behind him. The indescribable screeching and banging of tortured metal. Her own frantic sobbing breaths.

  Somehow, probably on autopilot, she managed to stop the SUV behind Matt’s van, and even remembered to hit the button for the emergency flashers. She flung open the door and half fell from the driver’s seat, at the same time she saw the van’s side door slide open, and heard the whine of the chairlift. From somewhere—the other side of the van—came the thump of a slamming door.

  “Matt—oh God, Matt—” She ran to him on shaking legs.

  “I’m fine,” he said, with a little jolt in his voice as his chair touched down. “It’s Eve—she went over the side.”

  “I saw. Oh God, Matt, she was trying—”

  “Yeah. Go see if there’s anything you can do for her.” He turned to call back to his brother inside the van. “If you can get a signal, call—”

  “Already on it.” From the depths of the van, Cory’s voice sounded eerily calm.

  “I see her!” Sam shouted, turning as Alex ran to join her on the edge of the drop-off. “She’s alive—out of the car—” She peered over the side and clamped a hand to her forehead. “Oh God—she’s in the river. Alex—”

  Down below, Alex could see the yellow Jeep lying upside down in the boulder-clogged river, its wheels still turning sluggishly, like the futilely waving legs of an overturned turtle. She could see Eve, too, now, a few yards downstream from the wreckage of the Jeep, caught in the white-water current. As Alex watched, she saw an arm reach out…and then another, as Eve struggled to swim, to keep her head above water…and then, miraculously, grab hold of a boulder. She was holding on…somehow, but how long she’d be able to was impossible to guess. And how badly was she injured? Alex had no way of knowing that, either.

  “There should be a rope in the back of the SUV,” she yelled back to Sam as she went over the side and began to slip-slide her way down the steep embankment. “When you get it, throw me a line. I’ll try to hold her….”

  “Got it, Alex—coming to you. Heads up!”

  She looked up and saw Matt grinning down at her, his chair perilously close to the edge of the drop as he swung the end of the rope around his head like a cowboy preparing to lasso a steer. For the first time since the yellow Jeep had gone flying past her on the highway, Alex felt her heart climb out of her stomach. She even managed to grin back at him as she reached up to snag the snaking end of the rope out of the air and loop it around her waist. She knotted it firmly, then looked up and yelled, “Okay—you got me?”

  “You bet,” he yelled back. “Always!”

  She felt giddy, absurdly happy—crazy, given the circumstances—but there was no other way to describe the feelings that swamped her then. She felt like a super-hero—she could do anything! With the rope around her waist and Matt holding on to the other end, she felt safe and strong and able to swim rivers and climb mountains—or move them, if need be.

  She all but flew down that bank, and in moments was waist-deep in rapids, scrambling over slippery rocks to reach the boulder where Eve was barely hanging on against the powerful current.

  Eve could see her coming now, and she was staring up at Alex, staring with desperate eyes that seemed to cling to her as tenaciously as her arms and hands and fingers clung to the granite boulder. Blood poured down her face and was instantly carried away by the turbulent water that surged and splashed into her face. Her lips were stretched wide in a desperate parody of a smile as she screamed words Alex couldn’t hear.

  “Hang on, Eve, I’m coming,” Alex yelled. And then she was there, and Eve was sobbing, clutching at her, and dangerously near to losing her hold on the rock in the process. “Wait—Don’t try to grab me, just let me—I’ve got you, okay? I’ve got you!”

  Too panic-stricken to listen, Eve relinquished her hold on the boulder and wrapped her arms in a stranglehold around Alex’s neck. And now Alex could hear what the other woman was saying, in panting words all mixed up with sobs. What she heard made every muscle in her body go slack with shock.

  “Why did you do it? Why did you take him back? You lied—you said you wouldn’t. You said—Oh, why didn’t he die? He was supposed to die. But he didn’t—but I thought it would be okay, because he was hurt, and couldn’t be on the river anymore. But he came back. He came back!”

  “Wait, Eve—” Alex couldn’t breathe. She wrenched the other woman’s arms from around her neck and held her away from her, stared at her, the roaring in her ears louder than the river. “Eve—” she gasped the words, shrieked them without sound “—what are you telling me?”

  Eve’s eyes stared back at her, swimming with anguished tears…tears of impotent rage, mixed with water and blood. “He wasn’t supposed to come back. Alex—why did you let him come back? We don’t need him—you and me—we don’t need him, Alex. He’s not what you need—don’t you see that? I had to make him go…for good, this time. Don’t you see?”

  Alex’s hands had lost all sensation. If she could have moved them, she might have flung the woman from her, flung her back into the rapids—she wanted to. Revulsion and horror filled her head—she couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. “It was you?” She said the words, not caring whether anyone heard. “Matt’s accident—it was you?”

  “He was supposed to die,” Eve wailed. “Oh God—why didn’t he die?”

  “She’s got her, I think,” Sam said.

  “Yeah,” said Matt, “but what’s she waiting for? What’s she doing?”

  He had the rope looped around his shoulders and had taken a good firm grip on it, ready to begin pulling when Alex gave the word. But now she seemed to be holding Eve off, and saying something to her—yelling at her. It almost looked like…some kind of struggle?

  Behind him he could hear cars pulling up alongside the road and stopping, people getting out of their cars, calling 9-1-1 on their cell phones, coming with offers to help. Offering to take the rope.

  “I’ve got this, but you can hold on to my chair,” he told them all when they asked. No way he was giving up that rope. That was Alex down there, depending on him to bring her back. They’d have to cut his arms off before he’d let go.

  What the hell is she waiting for?

  Then at last, he saw Alex lift her head and look up at him. She’d shifted Eve, got her on her back, piggyback style, and the rope looped around them both. And now she raised her arm to signal him she was ready. Matt waved back, then flexed his hands in the leather gloves all people in wheelchairs wore to protect their hands from blisters and calluses, thinking what a good thing they were to have at a time like this. And was aware even then of the irony in that.

  He turned his head to address the two hefty guys standing behind his chair. “You guys got me?” They both affirmed they were ready, took hold of his wheels and braced themselves. “Okay, here we go.”

  He began to pull on the rope, not taking his eyes off Alex as he eased up the slack, then began to pull the weight of the two women slowly up the bank. Watching, gauging the obstacles Alex had to navigate over and around, careful not to hurry, careful not to jolt her, letting her find the best way up through the brush and boulders, wrapping the rope around his bent arm to take up the slack. His muscles burned and sweat poured down his face and soaked into his T-shirt. Not since his early days in rehab, when he was first learning to bear the full weight of his body with just his arms, had he worked so hard. Or felt such triumph in it.

  All the while he
was pulling on that rope, pulling the woman he loved more than his own life up that hill, all he could think about was that she was here.

  She was here, where she’d no earthly reason to be, except for one: she’d followed him. She’d come after him. For Alex, that pretty much constituted a miracle.

  And it told him all he needed to know. For Alex Penny to let go of her pride and come chasing after him, she had to have some powerful feelings. He wasn’t foolish enough to think they didn’t still have things to work out between them, but he wasn’t ever going to ask her the question he’d asked her once before. He’d never ask her again if she loved him. She didn’t have to say the words.

  He knew.

  He could hear sirens far down the canyon, coming fast. Moments later the rope went slack in his hands as people rushed to help Alex with her burden. He bowed his head, breathing in hungry gulps, and didn’t see them bring her up the last few feet, over the edge and onto the hard-packed earth.

  When he looked up again, Eve was sobbing and struggling against the restraints of the Good Samaritans trying to give her aid, while Alex sat motionless a few feet away. He tossed away the rope, gave his wheels a shove and rolled over to her. When he said her name, she turned her head slowly to look at him, and the look on her face scared him. She was pale, deathly so, and her eyes looked blank, like windows in a deserted house.

  Shock, he thought, and reached out with a shaking hand to touch her cheek. Where in the hell were the paramedics?

  So naturally, at just that moment, a paramedic came and dropped his kit on the ground beside her, then bent over to ask if she was all right.

  She seemed to jerk herself back from whatever hell she’d been in and waved him away impatiently. “Go away—I’m fine.”

  The EMT glanced at Matt, then turned his attention back to Alex. “Ma’am, you need to let me look at you. Unless your ancestors came from another planet and blue-green is your natural color, I don’t think you’re fine. Okay?”