Double Entendre

by Heather Graham

  “Hey, kid, never give up until the end,” he warned her. “Never. But while we’re on the subject…” He lifted her chin. She could barely make out his profile. “Sweetheart, the confessions don’t all belong to you. Ah, Colleen! If I hadn’t been so damned temperamental, if I’d ever really tried to understand your feelings! I did some awful things, too, babe. I walked out on you without really trying to make you understand. There were a dozen times when I could have pressed an issue, when I could have asked questions instead of taunting you or coming up with a sarcastic remark. You were just so convinced that it was always the story that mattered. Colleen, I am a journalist. So are you. But nothing, nothing in my life, has ever mattered as much as you. I love you, Colleen. I never stopped loving you, wanting you. I spent months trying to think of a way to prevent you from getting a divorce.”

  “Did you really?” Colleen whispered.

  She couldn’t see his slow, rueful grin, but she could feel it. She knew him so well.

  “Really,” he told her huskily.

  “Oh, Bret!” she moaned, leaning against him, inhaling the scent of him, touching him, as if she could remember the sinewed warmth of his muscular frame for eternity. “Oh, Bret…”

  He caught her chin between his hands and kissed her tenderly. Then, to her surprise, he found the rounded portion of her derriere and gave it a sharp slap. “Up!” he said huskily.

  “What?” She was astonished. Up? They should have clung together, prayed together, held on for whatever time they had left.

  “Up! We’ve got to find a way out. Hey, lady, do you think I’m going to let you out of a lifetime commitment when I’ve just gotten a confession like that? Not on your life! We’re supposed to be in court in less than two weeks. We’ve got to tell our lawyers that they can take all their papers and stuff them. Come on!”

  He was already up. Her derriere was on the cold cement floor.

  “Bret, wait! What the hell are you doing? There could be rats down here, snakes, spiders…”

  “It’s too damned cold for anything to be alive down here. Come on!”

  She could hear him checking the walls with his hands for an escape route. She stood carefully, hesitantly. Stretching her arms out before her, she found the wall.

  “If I touch a rat or a spider,” she warned him, “I’m going to rip out a nice sandy lock of your hair!”

  She heard his throaty laughter. “That’s my girl!” he told her. But as time passed, even Bret was ready to give up, disgusted and exhausted. It really was an oubliette, a forgotten place. Cold walls and cold floor and nothing more.

  Held against him once more, Colleen felt her tears rising behind her eyelids. “Don’t give up!” he commanded her. “We’ve still got a chance. A good chance. Don’t forget, those two aren’t really as hardened as they pretend. We may very well be able to escape them.”

  “Not hardened! They’ve both got guns! They’ve already been involved in three murders.”

  “Dwyer is a klutz,” Bret said flatly. “Sandy is the brains, as they say. And she isn’t a talented killer. She bought and paid for services rendered in at least one case.”

  Colleen sniffed. “She obviously killed MacHowell.”

  “The opportunity was handed to her on a silver platter,” Bret announced with self-disgust.

  “But the guns…” Colleen repeated morosely.

  Bret seemed to hesitate for a second. He ruffled her hair. “We’re smarter,” he tried to assure her. Then his voice deepened gruffly. “And I told you that after that beautiful confession of yours, I have no intention of letting you out of a thing. We’re going to learn to be a loving, talking, communicating—compromising—couple.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. “I think we would always argue. If we had the chance,” she added wistfully, just stopping herself from sobbing.

  “We will have a chance,” he said firmly. “And I suppose we will argue. I think I do have a measure of male protectiveness….”

  “You like to run the show!” Colleen sniffed.

  “Well, yes, maybe. But you do have a tendency to fly off the handle like an idiot.”

  “I don’t!”

  “You do.”

  “Well, maybe,” she conceded.

  “And I only try to run the show when I feel you’re in danger of jeopardizing what I love most in the world—you.”

  “Oh, Bret!”

  She touched her lips to his, moist and caressing. Her tears mingling with the kiss; she played lightly with his tongue, then pressed against him in a fever, her breasts crushed to his chest, as if she could hold on forever.

  He broke away from her. “We’ll have to spend a great deal of time in bed. We never argue there. Have you noticed?”

  “Oh, Bret!” She couldn’t manage to say anything more. It was all so beautiful and too late.

  The hatch suddenly opened far above them. Bret and Colleen blinked against the light, and listened to the argument ensuing between their captors.

  “I still say we could just leave them down there,” Bill Dwyer was insisting.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Sandy protested in turn. “Holfer will be right behind us. He’d find them, or else that editor of theirs or that snooping Arab. They’ve got to be in an accident. A natural accident. The ski lift is perfect.”

  “And how do you know it will snap?”

  “The cables are frayed! The weight of a rat would cause them to snap!” She stared down into the hole. “Get up here!”

  Bret grinned up at her. “Sorry, Sandy. We can’t reach the ladder anymore. It broke, remember?”

  Sandy swore an inarticulate oath. A moment later a thick rope fell down to them. Colleen glanced at Bret and tried to be as nonchalant as he was. “I never was much at rope climbing.”

  “All you have to do is reach the hemp ladder. I’ll be beneath you.”

  Bret gave her a boost up. She was so nervous that her hands were slick, and she slipped twice.

  “If I have to,” Sandy warned, “I’ll shoot you.”

  “What the hell difference does it make?” Colleen muttered back. She struggled with the rope, then caught the ladder. Bill Dwyer reached down to pull her out of the trap. She shook free of his grasp as soon as she was standing and wondered fleetingly if she couldn’t force him to fall down the hole. No chance. As soon as she had balanced herself, Sandy pressed a gun to her spine.

  “Hurry up, McAllistair,” the woman called down to Bret. “We might have time for one more touching reunion at the ski lift.”

  Bret crawled out under his own power. “You take her,” Sandy told Bill, indicating Colleen. “He’s more trouble.”

  “Sandy…”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “Sounds like you don’t trust me,” Bill muttered, but he gripped Colleen’s arm and shoved her toward the entryway she had discovered with jubilation such a short time ago. Colleen couldn’t look back. She stumbled through the rubble and, with Bill still holding her, crawled out into the snow. She looked up at the sky. It was dark, with only the stars and a crescent moon to shine on the endless snow—and on the rusty ski lift that crept from cliff to cliff across the valley.

  Colleen swallowed sharply as Bill prodded her along, straight toward the lift. It seemed strange that the cold air should feel so good against her face, that she could enjoy the crisp crunching of the snow beneath her feet.

  “What happened to our last touching reunion?” she demanded, trying to keep the fear from her voice as Bill stepped past her to open the lift cage.

  “Get in!” he told her.

  She didn’t have any choice; he grabbed her arm and shoved her.

  But as she stepped into the cage, there was a commotion behind her.

  “Son of a bitch!” Bill yelled. Colleen saw that he was staring across the snow, that Sandy was facedown in it and that Bret seemed to be flying across it toward them.

  “Bret!”

  He was carrying his own gun. Where had it come from? she
wondered a little vaguely. Then Bill Dwyer was screaming again, his hand shaking too badly to aim.

  Bret plowed into Bill, and the two men fell into the snow. Colleen started to sob in relief, but the sob caught in her throat with horror. There was a screeching sound, a horrible, shrill echo against the quiet of the mountains and the snow. Dimly she realized that Bill had hit the lever that started the cage.

  The ski lift was moving. Shaking, trembling, still screeching from lack of oil. But it was moving.

  “Bret!” she screamed.

  He heard her. She saw him struggle to his feet and reach desperately for the lever. He was just about to touch it when a second figure rose from the snow—Dwyer, pitching himself against Bret’s back. The two fell again. Then Sandy was up, staggering after them, trying to find their weapons that were lost in the snow.

  “Oh, God, no!” Colleen breathed a desperate prayer. She looked above her where the roof was rusted through. She could see the cage sliding along the cables. She could see the cables, worn and thin, catching on the pulleys of the cage and causing it to teeter like a stumbling drunk. “No!” she cried again, and she tore desperately at the door; it wouldn’t give, no matter how frantically she pulled.

  Below her she could still see the snow. Not far below, maybe ten feet or so. A long jump, but soon the snow would be a hundred feet beneath her, then two hundred feet.

  And the crescent moon still showed Bret in the center of a desperate struggle with both Sandy and Dwyer.

  “No!” She shook the metal cage, ripping the frozen flesh on her fingers as she clawed at it. Her minutes were evaporating into seconds, seconds that would fade so quickly.

  Something caught her eye. A movement across the snow, not from the tunnel, but from the road below it. There was a figure streaking toward her, a figure dressed all in black, with a black ski mask hiding its identity.

  Her heart seemed to lodge in her throat. Who was it, pelting toward them? Not toward the ski lift, as she had first thought, but toward the fracas in the snow. Could it be a third accomplice? Someone Sandy had hired?

  As he slammed his fist against Dwyer’s jaw, Bret, too, saw the figure. He was so stunned that he barely ducked in time to avoid Dwyer’s counter attack. He caught Dwyer with an upswing. A loud crack followed, and when Dwyer went down this time, he was unconscious. Bret struggled to his feet, but Sandy immediately pitched herself against him once more, like a wild animal gone mad.

  He wanted to kill her. To strangle her. Not because she had so little regard for the value of human life, but because every second that he struggled with her, Colleen’s chances grew slimmer.

  “Go!” a voice suddenly shouted.

  Bret was amazed; the figure in black had reached him and was hauling Sandy from him with a fresh and forceful strength.

  “Go save your wife!” the figure in the black ski mask ordered.

  Bret was only too happy to oblige. He was dimly aware that more people were arriving as he struggled through the knee-deep snow. He was barely aware of anything until he heard another voice that he knew very well.

  “Bret, boy, move!”

  It was Carly, his command filled with tension. The snow no longer seemed an obstacle to Bret. He plowed through it in desperation. The lift…in a matter of seconds it would be above the valley. And if the cable gave way then, it would mean certain death.

  Colleen, too, knew the danger. Frantically she continued to tear at the door, feeling as if the promise of death were a blanket around her. She was becoming hysterical, and she could not calm herself. What did it matter if she did? No one would be able to save her. They would hear only her scream when the air tore from her as the lift plummeted downward.

  Then she gasped, astounded as she saw a pair of hands grabbing the woven metal floor of the lift. She saw Bret’s face, his eyes silver in the night, his skin sheened with exertion as he hiked himself up by the strength of his arms.

  “Bret!” she cried, grateful, terrified. It was bad enough to face the abyss herself. If he couldn’t reach her, he would keep trying, and he, too, would die.

  “Get ready to jump!”

  Her heart slammed against her cheek. Jump! The snow was so far away! Suddenly all she could think was that his face looked so wonderful, that she was so glad to have seen him, his eyes, his care, his love.

  “Colleen! Pay attention!”

  He was balanced against the cage, grinding at the lock with a pocketknife. To her astonishment the door gave. It opened with a screech, almost sending Bret catapulting down to the snow below.

  Almost.

  “Your hand! Colleen! Give me your hand.”

  Panic closed around her. The ground was farther away than ever.

  “Colleen!”

  The anguish in his voice touched and warmed and awakened her to the promise of life. She stretched out her hand and felt his fingers winding around hers, strong and secure.

  “Now!”

  Colleen closed her eyes and jumped.

  The snow rushed up to meet her, cold and hard. Her breath was swept away as snow clogged her nose and eyes and froze her cheeks. She thought she was dying. Her lungs seemed about to explode, but she gasped for breath, and it came to her. She opened her eyes and saw the beautiful crescent of the moon. She tried to move and she could. She was stiff, cold and sore, but nothing seemed to be broken.

  A clattering thud rent the night and echoed in her ears. Colleen closed her eyes again, tears stinging them. The ski lift had fallen down to the valley below. She trembled. But for Bret she would have been on that lift.

  “Colleen?”

  She opened her eyes again. Bret was before her. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, and his eyelashes were white with snow, as were his cheeks.

  “Colleen?”

  She smiled slowly, loving the anxiety in his eyes.

  “Are you all right? Colleen?”

  She nodded, still unable to speak. His hands cupped her cheeks. His lips touched hers, and they trembled. They should have been cold, but they were rich with heat.

  She brought her arms around him. “Oh, Bret…”

  He spoke against her throat, whispering things that were unintelligible, but understood, and she returned them. They were alive. They were both alive. Everything was beautiful and precious. The moon, the air, even the burning cold sensation of the snow. And Bret…his touch, his lips, his heat.

  They became aware of footsteps plodding through the drifts. Bret broke away. He tried to help Colleen to her feet, but stumbled. She gasped as the black-clad figure came up to her, helped her stand, then retreated to remove the black ski mask.

  “Wilhelm! Oh, thank God!”

  She was going to sink back to her knees again, but Wilhelm supported her. The wind touched his hair and turned it gold and silver; his eyes were radiant blue against the darkness. “Mrs. McAllistair, Mr. McAllistair, you are all right?” he asked anxiously.

  Bret had managed to stand on his own. He slipped an arm around Colleen’s shoulders and nodded grimly, then reached out his free hand to grasp Wilhelm’s. “Thanks to you,” he said quietly. “If you hadn’t taken Sandy off of me—”

  He broke off because Carly, trying to reach them, had just pitched forward on his face into the snow. Carly cursed away, and Bret laughed, stepping forward to grimace at Wilhelm, who helped him raise Carly to his feet. Carly sputtered, spitting snow. Colleen laughed, too, and rushed forward to hug him, almost knocking him over again.

  “What—” she began. “How—”

  Wilhelm smiled and answered her calmly while Carly still swore softly at the snow. “Your Moroccan friend found me when everyone disappeared. He found a note in his room mentioning the oubliette. Living in this place, I knew it. I was able to find Carlton, and he insisted we rush here immediately.”

  “Thank God!” Bret breathed.

  Wilhelm was staring up at the mountain. He pointed that way, still smiling grimly. “The authorities will take them from here. There
is nothing else that we must do now.” He shook his head. “Tyrell’s granddaughter. Who would have suspected…?”

  He shrugged and turned back to them. “My father is waiting in the car on the road. He would like you to make his acquaintance. Will you do so?”

  “Will I?” Bret chuckled ruefully. “Herr Holfer, I would do anything in my power that you asked. If you hadn’t got here when you did…”

  His voice trailed away. Wilhelm Holfer smiled with understanding, but quickly dismissed his role in the action. “Life is its own reward, is it not, Mr. McAllistair?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He was already turning to Carly. “You will all be our guests at the schloss, please?”

  “Yes, by all means,” Carly replied. He stepped past Bret and Colleen, obviously quite pleased with himself and the outcome of the evening. “Come along now, you two,” he said, speaking as if they were a pair of wayward children.

  Then he was gone, following Wilhelm down the slope. Bret squeezed Colleen’s hand and pulled her against him. She slipped her arms around his waist, hugging him tightly and silently saying a prayer of awe and thanks once more. She was alive. Bret was alive.

  Miraculously they would have a future.

  He whispered into her ear a little gruffly, “You made some commitments to me back there, lady.”

  “I know.”

  “You haven’t changed your mind?”

  “Not a bit. Why?”

  He paused for a minute, staring down into her eyes. Then he shrugged, inclining his head toward Wilhelm. “Well, it seems that I was a rather faulty hero. I wouldn’t have made it without Wilhelm Holfer. Tall, rugged, blue eyed and obviously intrigued. You haven’t got any ideas about him, have you?”

  “Ummm.” She pretended to muse over his words.

  “Colleen!”

  She tried to bat her lashes innocently, but they were too clogged with snow. She laughed, the sound a little jittery with the aftermath of terror and her delight in being alive. “How did you get that gun?”

  “I had it with me all the time. It was just that they had two of them. I spun on Sandy when she wasn’t expecting me to have a weapon, but I couldn’t use it on Bill because its range isn’t all that great and I might just as easily have hit you.”