What Doesn't Kill Her

by Christina Dodd

  “I faked it well. They liked my degrees. They loved my degrees.” They weren’t really my degrees, but I presented them as if they were. She hesitated.

  My name is Kellen Adams, and that’s half a lie.

  She should tell him, but they were just now beginning to talk about the important things. Naked. After making love.

  She wanted to tell him the truth. About her. About who she really was.

  She would tell him the truth. “Max?”

  He watched her with anticipation, as if he had been waiting for this moment. “Go on.”

  Across the room, Zone’s communications panel came alive with two words.

  “Mommy! Daddy!”

  33

  At the sound of Rae’s excited voice, Max vaulted off the bed and flung a blanket over Kellen, dragged the comforter over his shoulders, then stood blinking. “Wait,” he said. “There’s no video.”

  “Right.” Kellen pulled the blanket off the bed anyway.

  Still wrapped in the comforter, he headed toward the satellite station and flipped the switch. “Hi, honey. Did you make it home okay?”

  “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Rae could hardly speak—for about two seconds. Then she was off and running. “Bills Brooks took me on a tour over the top of the winery and I saw everything from the air, and I waved at everybody, and Grandma clutched her chest, and Mr. Brooks put the helicopter down right in front of the winery, and he told me when I got out to wave like the Queen of England, and I did!”

  “That’s great, sweetheart.” Max gestured Kellen over. “So now you’re with your grandma?”

  “I’m right here, Maximilian.” Verona sounded more than a little stern. “It was a thrill I wasn’t expecting to see my youngest granddaughter drop out of the sky with a stranger.”

  Max looked helplessly at Kellen.

  Kellen stepped up to the microphone. “We should have called you, Mrs. Di Luca, but after Rae left Max had to help me back into the lookout... This trip hasn’t been good on my hip and I don’t know if Rae told you, but I was shot.”

  “Shot? She told me it was nothing but a scratch!”

  “I did say that to her.” Kellen didn’t even have to work to put a chill in her voice. “Not long before I passed out.”

  Pause. “Oh.”

  “Mommy, are you okay now?” Rae asked.

  Phooey. Kellen had wanted to scare Verona, not Rae. “After Zone sewed me up, I was fine. You saw him do it.”

  “I want to be a doctor,” Rae announced.

  “I thought blood made you sick.” Verona sounded surprised.

  “It used to,” Rae said.

  Before she’d seen a lot of it. Before Verona could connect the dots, Kellen asked, “Is Mr. Brooks still there?”

  “He left before I could even thank him for bringing her home,” Verona said.

  “He had to take the Triple Goddess someplace safe.” Rae sounded very serious. “Grandma, it’s an important historical artifact.”

  Kellen and Max exchanged grins.

  “I’m sure it is, whatever it is. And I’m sure your daddy is taking good care of your mommy.” With an edge in her voice, Verona said, “Maximilian, remember what happened last time you took care of Kellen Adams, and this time, practice safety!”

  How did she know they were standing here naked except for some bedclothes? “Are you sure there’s no video?” Kellen mouthed silently at Max.

  “Grandma, Mommy can’t help if she was shot at while she was saving me!” Rae was squaring off with her grandmother. Over Kellen.

  Kellen dived toward the microphone. “Did you show your grandma the yarn that was your poor blankie? Did you ask her if she would teach me to crochet so I can put it back together for you?”

  “What happened to your blankie?” Verona sounded angry.

  “We used it for a spider web to catch the bad guys. Let me show you!” They heard Rae’s shoes clatter away at a run.

  In a low voice, Verona asked, “She was in real danger, wasn’t she?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Kellen said. “But she’s home with you now, safe and sound, and I promise I’ll never take her into danger again.”

  Verona took two slow, audible breaths. “It wasn’t your fault. She’s a feckless child, adventurous to a fault, and I...thank you for keeping her safe. I’ve just been so frightened. So frightened.” Verona was making an excuse for herself, for her rudeness.

  Kellen understood. “Of course. She is my daughter.”

  “She’s very like you,” Verona said. It was not a compliment. But it was a fact.

  Max was looking at Kellen, frowning, as if they were speaking in code. Which Kellen supposed, to a guy, they were.

  “Verona, would you do something for me?” Kellen asked. “Would you call Yearning Sands Resort and talk to Birdie Haynes, tell her that I’m safe, and I’ll contact her as soon as I get off this mountain?”

  “Of course. I’m glad to do that for you.” Verona took a breath. “Be safe. Be safe. I know how to crochet. I can put her blanket back together. I can even teach you to do it. But I can’t fix everything. So take care.”

  34

  “So Rae’s strategy worked. You’re bonded.” Max beamed at her, his brown eyes bright and triumphant.

  “Yes.” Kellen realized she sounded disgusted, possibly not the response he was looking for, and hastily she added, “I know it’s a good thing. But I have so many regrets for what I’ve missed, and I can see so much pain ahead.”

  He waved away her concerns. “Don’t worry about what you’ve missed. With a little prompting, my mother will give you the whole Rae-from-birth-to-first-grade-graduation slide show.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “How many weeks do you have?”

  Kellen narrowed her eyes at him. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Mom never deletes a picture,” he informed her.

  “Yippee.”

  “I wouldn’t mind so much, but since I’m the tallest she always cuts off the top of my head.”

  Kellen chuckled.

  “Do you remember my family in Pennsylvania at all?” He had a way of making her laugh, relax and then—wham! He slapped her with a question or a memory.

  Kellen opened her mouth and shut it, squinted and tried to explain. “I remember some things very well. I remember being on the streets and seeing that man dragging that screaming, crying little girl.”

  “My niece, Annabella, in the hands of her father, Ettore Fontina. That worthless bastard.” Max’s mouth was set in an unusual cruel crescent. “Did I tell you he hung himself? When he found out that this time, not even his wealthy Italian mama could get him out of prison, he hung himself in his cell.”

  “Hung himself in prison? Good. That’s good. I can never forgive him for that shot that stole—”

  “Memory, love, a year of your life? More than we can even say?”

  Max’s anger hung on the air between them. In a placid tone, she said, “He taught me the value of time.”

  “I should have killed him when he tried to kidnap Annabella.”

  “You’d still be serving your sentence.”

  “I’d get off for good behavior.” He dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “What else do you remember?”

  “Your sister.” Kellen had spoken with her once on the phone since regaining her memories, but there had been no family visits yet. Kellen suspected Max had insisted the new family have time alone. “She was so grateful to me for saving her daughter. She kissed me on both cheeks. I remember thinking she was a little nuts. Then I remember realizing everyone in your family thought I was more than crazy, or on drugs.”

  “I didn’t think that.”

  “I know. You always believed I was just—”

  “—hurt.”

  She swa
llowed and nodded. “I remember your mother. She liked me a lot more in Pennsylvania than she does now. I remember—” Kellen was squinting again, trying to see through the fog of amnesia to those winter days eight and a half years ago “—Christmas! Your family! So many of them. I don’t know that I could have remembered them even if... Even that spring if I hadn’t been shot in the head.” She touched the round scar on her forehead and looked at him. “Mostly I remember you. I remember how kind you were to me, as if I was fragile.”

  “You were fragile. I was afraid at any moment you were going to break and run.”

  “I did break and run.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to me?” he muttered.

  He sounded so wretched she was at last able to say, “I panicked when I realized you snooped into my papers.”

  “Was that so awful?” Immediately, he answered his own question. “Okay, yes, I know it was. You had vigilantly not said your real name or confided your past. I had no right. I told myself it would help our relationship if I knew. I lied to myself. I apologize.”

  Nothing about this was easy. Everything was guilt and confusion. “I was a coward, and I guess I got what I deserved.”

  “You made a mistake. No one deserves to spend a year in a coma for a mistake.” Max knew what he thought, what he believed. He slipped from the bed to a place on the floor. He knelt before her, naked and on one knee. “Kellen Adams, will you marry me?”

  She stared in horror at him.

  He said, “You just turned pale. You look like you’re going to throw up. You’re upset because there’s no ring? No flowers?”

  She shook her head. She couldn’t speak.

  Max had proposed to Kellen Adams.

  My name is Kellen Adams—and that’s only half the truth.

  But that was the real problem. She could confess who she was, and Max would understand her evasions. Might understand. She hoped. But that revelation was only the beginning. “I can’t. Max, I can’t.”

  “There’s no reason to be frightened.” Slowly, he reached for her fingers. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I know that. I would never think that you...” He was right. She felt queasy and sweaty. “I trust you,” she said, but she pulled her hand from his grasp.

  “Can you tell me why you won’t marry me?” he asked.

  “I can’t.” Not without telling you all my secrets.

  I’ve got the scar of a gunshot on my forehead.

  35

  He limped down the mountain to the lot where he’d parked his Lexus NX Hybrid.

  He had disposed of the firearms. In a wretched, rugged, ridiculous wilderness like this, that was easier than he could have hoped.

  But he’d had enough of hiking and tracking and waiting for these supposed professionals to do their jobs. He would make one more attempt to handle matters using the help, and if that didn’t do it, he’d take over. He would get the job done, clean up the loose ends and be gone.

  How hard could it be to kill one lone woman and her brat?

  36

  Three days later, late in the afternoon, the message from Zone arrived at Horizon Lookout.

  I’m on the way back. Get out.

  “Mr. Rogers he’s not,” Kellen observed as she helped Max pack his backpack full of whatever foodstuffs they were able to scrounge from Zone’s pantry. It wasn’t much; they had to get down the mountain quickly or they’d starve.

  Max took one last look at the screen that scanned the area for life. “Nobody out there,” he said. There had been no signs of humans since Zone had disappeared off the screen.

  “That’s good,” she said.

  “Sure is,” he agreed.

  They were both spooked.

  And she was uncomfortable.

  Max had proposed, naked and exposed.

  She had rejected him and refused to tell him why.

  He’d been mild, calm, conciliatory. For days. Hands off. A caretaker.

  She was still waiting for the other shoe to fall. Because she’d come to know Max well, and the man wasn’t mild and conciliatory. He had an agenda and he worked it until he got his way.

  But she had too much at stake to abandon her stance.

  I’ve got the scar of a gunshot on my forehead.

  Max shouldered the backpack, stepped onto the deck, performed a visual survey of the Horizon Lookout surroundings and lowered the stairs. “If you feel weak or need help, you tell me, but the sooner we’re off the mountain, the better.”

  She followed Max down the steps and into the canyon. “You don’t believe we’re safe.”

  “Do you?”

  No. Of course she didn’t. Someone had murdered those men, those thieves and assassins, and that person was still out there somewhere. Their days in Horizon Lookout had given them a respite, but whoever it was, he was still out there, waiting and watching.

  She was not completely recovered; the stitches in her arm itched, her hip ached, she slept hard and ate with appetite. Having abandoned her backpack on the trek here, she now walked unencumbered, carrying her weapon in her holster and a sleeping bag strapped to her shoulder. Going downhill would be easy...until they passed through the canyon and into the site of the battle for the Triple Goddess head.

  Everything about this place was haunted: the bloodstains, the ashes caused by the burning tablet, the few human remains that lingered after three days of predation... Kellen had visited and revisited battlefields, but this was different. In this one, she had feared not for herself, but for her daughter, and as she stood here and remembered, her heart pumped fear and desperation through her veins.

  Max took her arm. “We can’t linger.”

  “I don’t even want to. Though somehow I think—”

  “You could find a clue about the man who hired the hunters?”

  “Yes.”

  “We looked. Zone and I searched separately and together.” Max herded her down the mountain. “Whoever was chasing you and the head had access to funds.”

  “Considering the value of the head, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.” It wasn’t until they turned onto the bicycle path that she relaxed and walked with Max without looking over her shoulder. “It’s beautiful up there on Horizon Ridge—and I don’t ever want to go back.”

  “The farther away we get, the happier I am. I like this descent. I hear music in my head, the kind they play in the action movies to make your heart pound, but it’s a good feeling. We’re getting away. We’re almost safe.”

  “Right. Almost safe.” That sounded like something they said in those action movies right before everything went south. “What music did you hear when you were going uphill?”

  “Uphill was different. The music was ominous, I was walking and running, terrified I would be too late. It was like one of those nightmares where you want to sprint, but your feet are too heavy.” As he spoke and recalled, he moved faster and faster, into the evening’s gathering dusk.

  She was good with that. The forest surrounded them, the wilderness lands released their call and gathered in the people who knelt against the earth and listened to its call. The sun set, that impressive sudden slash as the mountain ripped the light away, and suddenly they were in darkness.

  Kellen stopped walking. “Listen to the quiet. I can’t hear the call of a night bird or the scamper of a squirrel. It’s as if we were alone in the world.”

  For the first time in days, Max pulled her close. “We’re not going to make it all the way down the mountain tonight. Not in this dark. What do you say we...linger...a few more hours?”

  Their last night alone, without responsibility, feeling like teenagers and loving like adults, the two of them together again, understanding that each moment might be the last.

  She cupped his face, seeing his dim outline in the starlight and recognizing it in h
er heart. “Look at the sky. I’ll remember this for the rest of my—” A thin, bright red beam flashed across the clearing and into her eyes.

  Max slammed into her, hard and fast, knocking her backward, slamming her head into a boulder and shoving her to the ground behind its shelter.

  A rifle shot blasted the world to pieces.

  She gasped for breath.

  No air.

  She struggled against a weight.

  His weight, collapsed on her, two hundred pounds of muscle, bone and fury, bunching, preparing to—

  He rolled off and disappeared.

  She was alone.

  Her head splintered with blinding pain. The black sky weighed on her like an iron sheet, pressing her into the dirt. She sank. The stars were holes poked through the iron, allowing those few hints of light from beyond.

  She still couldn’t breathe.

  The pain in her head was blistering cold.

  She still couldn’t move.

  She couldn’t run.

  The gray was coming for her from that place where it hovered, waiting to take her.

  It pounced, and she traveled out of time, out of mind, to nowhere and nothing.

  From far away, she heard another shot. So final, so fatal.

  She was back. Sprawled on the ground. She could hear shouting. Men shouting. A series of thumps, hard and fast. But no more shooting.

  Was Max alive?

  He had to live.

  She wanted to stand up, to see, to help. She couldn’t move. Nothing. She tried to wiggle her fingers, her toes. She was trapped in her own body, panicked, silently screaming.

  The gray waited, always there.

  No malice. No kindness. A hell of nothing. Blank months. Wasted years.

  She cried without tears.

  And was gone forever.

  Again.

  37

  Something wet fell into Kellen’s palm.

  She flinched and opened her eyes.

  Gray again. Gray sky, the beginnings of dawn in the mountains.