“When were you contacted?”
This she didn’t know how to answer, and she thought a moment. “Right away,” she ventured, and he appeared puzzled.
“And how much did Rodriquez tell you?” His hand was clenched and ready, and she kept her eyes on it.
“Everything. We know all about your operation.” She was backhanded across her mouth and blood spurted. In a way she was grateful for being on the floor, because she was trembling so much she couldn’t have supported herself in a chair if she’d had to. She felt the seepage of something wet down her trouser leg and didn’t dare look. It trickled. The wound no longer hurt, as her whole leg was going numb.
“Liar!” he snarled, frustrated. “He didn’t know everything to tell!” He thought a moment, baffled and furious. “This is much too easy. What are you up to?”
“It’s simple,” she said, her words slurred now, her eyes glazing over. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about. I think you’re quite mad, actually. I know I’m going to die sooner or later, and I’m telling you what I think you want to know, because I don’t like being beaten.” And from sheer despair, she chuckled painfully, wryly, thinking what a strange ending to her life. She fainted.
The commander and the guard at the door stared at her in astonishment, totally thrown off by that queer laugh at the end. “I hate to say this,” the guard ventured slowly, “but I have the oddest feeling she’s telling the truth.”
The commander sighed with impatience. She had fainted too soon. He would have her bandaged and then brought to. She was right. She was going to die. The commander was a vengeful man, and she had sadly trampled on his ego. He fingered the bruise at the side of his face and felt a grudging admiration, along with a renewed surge of rage. He would make sure she died unpleasantly for that.
“Of course she’s telling the truth,” he said, and stalked out of the room.
A floating in yellow, brown and dull green haze. Her eyes focused on the man over her, who was bandaging her right leg with white strips of cloth that turned a spotted red as she watched. How long had she been unconscious? Perhaps fifteen minutes? There was no way of telling. She sighed wearily and it brought the man’s head up. He was a stranger to her, older, with greying hair, and in his eyes was a sneaking compassion.
He said in Spanish, “I am to tell the commander when you awake. He is out supervising the work. We are leaving the island within the hour.”
Her mouth felt lopsided, swollen, as she twisted one side. “Am I to be killed before you leave, or after, at his convenience?”
The man looked away. “I could delay going to him.”
It was quite an offer. If the commander ever suspected that this man had dared shelter her, he could be in danger. “No need,” she whispered dully. “The end is the same. I have to face it sometime.”
The man started to say something, but stopped as he looked into her eyes. They were on opposing sides. Though he felt sorry for her, he could not change his allegiance. He left the room.
After about ten minutes, during which she realised she was running a fever from her wound for the room would not stop moving on her, the man, who must be the doctor for the rebels, entered the room and behind him came the commander.
She turned her head away. The whole nightmare began again, with the relentless questions, the blows to her head and sometimes her stomach, his gloating, leering face. She just lay like a limp rag doll, and finally refused to answer his questions when she realised that he was determined to torture her no matter what she said.
He seemed to be infuriated, frustrated. She couldn’t know that her passive response and lack of screaming and crying enraged the man more than anything. He was a man who lived by his particular code of power, which rarely failed to intimidate his underlings. And this slip of a woman, while he slapped her time and time again, was no more interested in him than if he had been a chair.
He stopped and stared at her. “I will make you scream,” he said softly. “I will take you for my pleasure and then give you to my men. There are three hundred out there. You will scream.”
“No doubt,” she whispered, eyes closed. She just wished it was over with. The doctor had given her something that made her feel very woozy. It helped. She wished her ear would quit ringing. He tended to slap her on one side, and it had passed beyond the merely painful to the excruciating as he abused bruised flesh.
He seemed to come to a decision and raised his fist again. She didn’t even flinch. Maybe she would get lucky. Maybe one of the blows would kill her. But his head reared back and he cocked his head in a listening manner.
Leslie could hear far off commotion and wondered disinterestedly what was happening now. She tried to guess the commander’s intention, and rather thought that he would kill her before bothering to transport her in an hour or so. Then she too cocked her head. The doctor’s eyes widened. The faint sounds were shots. What could be happening?
She wasn’t hearing as well as the others, for her ear was ringing annoyingly, and her whole body distracted her with throbbing agony. She felt like every bone had been broken and then trampled on for good measure. She could barely believe that it was early morning dawn, just two days after she had been leaving her apartment. Her leg was pounding, swollen against the bandages, and she saw that the white cloth was now quite red. She started to phase in and out of reality.
It was so strange. She could have sworn that she heard shouts and running feet down the outside corridor. The commander was backing against the far wall and pulling out his gun. But how could he have a gun? She had taken his. She shook her head, confused, and something slammed against the closed door with the force of a raging hurricane. The wood splintered, and a surging huge body careened into the room, ricocheting off the doorpost in a blur. The commander raised his gun and fired at the hurtling figure, but the other man was too fast. He lifted something large and black, and the commander’s body slumped down the wall into a heap.
Now Leslie knew that she had passed into the queer realm of delirium, for the room’s harsh light glittered off silver blond hair. And another man slammed into the room and pointed a gun at the doctor, who hadn’t made a move. Jarred.
And Scott was dropping his ugly weapon and coming forward, his dark eyes wide and horrified, face rigid. Leslie’s fever bright eyes regarded him solemnly. Her face was dark blue and purple along her right cheek, her mouth swollen on one side. Her slacks were torn off at the right leg above the knee, and the hasty bandage, unattended, was starting to drip vivid red blood. She looked like a fragile, battered child. He bent, mouth distorted, and gathered her oh, so gently into his arms and cradled her slim body against his chest. She bore absolutely no resemblance to the sunny, laughing, quick-witted creature he knew.
“D’you kill ’im?” she managed to say. Her mouth hurt so.
His answer was uncompromising. “Yes.”
She sighed and it quivered through her whole body. His arms tightened fearfully, and he knew he should get her medical attention quickly. “S’nice dream,” she murmured, and her eyes closed. He knew by the sudden full weight of her head on his arm that she was unconscious.
Leslie looked up and smiled in lopsided surprise when she saw Scott enter the hospital room. He came forward and crinkled a smile down at her. “Hello, how’re you feeling?”
“Terrific,” she said, perfectly truthful. She grinned as he threw back his head and laughed at her. “I’m serious. My leg is throbbing, my whole body is stiff and hurts if I even think of moving too fast, and my mouth is so sore I can barely chew my food. But I feel fantastic.” She looked around and chuckled. “Have you ever seen so many flowers?”
His eyes were on her, not the fragrant bouquets. “Yes. Yesterday and the day before, but each time you were sleeping.”
She laughed in embarrassment. “I didn’t know. Well, your timing today is pretty lousy, too, I’m afraid. Wayne is going to be here any minute to pick me up. Three days is too long in a
hospital, and I can’t stand it any longer.”
Scott came forward and picked up her suitcase. “I know. He’s downstairs in the car, waiting at the pick up zone. I’m to bring you down.” Just then a young pretty nurse came in and smiled at Leslie and Scott. She was wheeling in a chair.
“Are you ready, Ms Tremaine?” Leslie nodded fervently, which made Scott laugh again, and the nurse grinned sympathetically. The nurse moved forward, but was stopped by Scott.
“I’ll do that for you,” he said lazily, coming up on the other side of Leslie’s seated figure. He picked her up as easily as if she’d been a child, and settled her into the wheel chair with an astonishing gentleness. Leslie pulled back her arm, which she’d placed around his neck. For a moment he was very, very close, and he stared into her eyes. His own held a strange, glowing expression, and she looked away in confusion. She heard his soft laugh. She leaned both elbows on the sides of the chair and covered her mouth with both hands, feeling oddly shaken.
The brief ride in the wheel chair was pleasant: to the elevator, and down to the ground floor, then outside to the waiting car. Her eyes widened as the nurse pushed her to where Scott directed, a strange car, and empty. “Where’s Wayne?” she asked him surprised. This wasn’t his car.
Scott looked around curiously. “I don’t know. He must be waiting in the front lobby, thinking we were coming by that way. I’ll go and get him after you’re settled.”
“This isn’t his car,” she said slowly, as he lifted her up and put her into the front seat as carefully as if she had been fragile china. Her suitcase, the stuffed animal Wayne had brought her, and the box of candy from Jarred, along with the walking cane she was to use until her leg healed completely went into the back seat. The bullet had been lodged in her upper shin and she had needed an operation to remove it, but the wound had been a muscle tear only. She would heal as good as new.
“It’s my car,” Scott told her in explanation. “We thought it would be the best. It’s bigger and more comfortable. It has better shocks than Wayne’s does.” She nodded with a rueful grin. He was most probably right. Nearly anything was better than Wayne’s car. Scott hesitated and asked her, as the nurse wheeled the empty chair away, “Did you want your flowers brought down, too?”
She shook her head. “No, I gave them to the nursing staff. They were beautiful, but rather overwhelming. Every single person from the hijacking sent me some! Wasn’t that nice?”
Something passed over his face and was gone. “Yes, very.” He walked around to the other side of the car and got in casually. Leslie looked at him in surprise.
“But aren’t you going to get Wayne?” she asked him warily.
There was a strange smile hovering around Scott’s well moulded lips. She wasn’t sure she liked it. “I lied,” he said cheerfully. “Wayne didn’t come along. I told him I’d pick you up.”
She cocked an eyebrow as she stared out the window at the Chicago traffic. He pulled on to a main street. “I might have known you were up to mischief,” she said calmly. She leaned her head back against the rest and watched dreamily as the traffic swirled by. The last several days had been disorienting and confusing. She had been in a fever and couldn’t really remember what had happened after her bruising confrontation with the “commander”, only four days ago. She had apparently been delirious, actually thinking that Scott and Jarred were there, along with the FBI force that had raided the island after the plane with the hostages had taken off. After that she couldn’t even piece enough of her consciousness together to get her from there to here, which was to say, Chicago. She could only rely on what others had told her: that she’d been given immediate medical care and then flown to Chicago and admitted there. She had awakened in Chicago after the whole business, half inclined to think of it all as a dream, except for her painful leg and the ugly bruises on her body. They were real enough, though the bruises were now an ugly, yellowish black. Her hand went to her cheek automatically as she thought of this.
They were approaching the turn off that they should take to get to her neighbourhood, and Leslie briefly wondered if Scott even knew where she lived. That made her hope that Wayne had watered her plants for her. He probably had given the fern too much, and it would have root rot setting in. It was a struggle keeping her plants when her neighbour went on holiday and couldn’t take care of them, her usual arrangement.
Scott stepped on the accelerator and flew by the turn off. Leslie turned her head sharply, felt the twinge in sore neck muscles. She cleared her throat as she tried to read his expression. “You missed the turn,” she pointed out patiently.
“I know,” he said sweetly, and increased his speed.
Her brows shot up. “You do? Then might I ask you just what the hell is going on?”
“I’m kidnapping you,” he told her conversationally, and crossed over to the other lane.
“You’re what?” It was a scream of amazement. She deliberately relaxed rigid, hurting muscles and forced herself to take several calming breaths. She said more reasonably, “What did you just say?”
“I said I’m kidnapping you,” he repeated, in a patient tone. Leslie felt her eyes widen in incredulity, then narrow in anger. “You have,” he continued, “a month’s sick leave. I also have taken some time off. We are going to have a vacation together, and you are going to rest. The weather forecast is good. Do you like the country?”
“You’re loony,” she stated with flat certainty.
“That is a distinct possibility.”
“Turn around this instant and take me back. I won’t stand for this,” she ordered, still inclined to think he was joking.
“No.” His answer was devastatingly simple.
She took a deep, unsteady breath and sighed, more upset than she’d at first thought. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered. “This is totally crazy, you know that.”
“I know that you have every reason to believe that.” He didn’t look at her once.
“Are you going to explain yourself?” she asked, in a voice that trembled. He shot her a swift look, face gentling.
“Not yet. The seat tilts back, if you’d like to rest. You’re not as strong as you would like to think.”
The utter truth of his words shuddered through her. She thought ironically that he would be surprised if he only knew how accurate his statement had been. She groped under the seat and pressed a control. The back slipped down, and she settled into a comfortable position. In a world that had bucked in an upheaval so tremendous it had nearly taken her life, her awareness had just been jolted, and she needed time to recover. Scott’s actions were bizarre by most standards, and yet he had never seemed more calm or reasonable. Her eyes narrowed on him interestedly. He seemed—grimly purposeful, instead of raving mad. She wondered what his motive was, and spent some time trying to assess his actions. She couldn’t come up with anything that made any sense. Shock rippled through her briefly as she realised how little she really knew about him. The swift car ate up the miles, the motion soothing. He was a good driver. She watched him, seeing the long silver blond hair, his stubborn jaw, the line of power stamped on his face. His hands were large on the steering wheel. She got a sudden vivid image of him wielding a deadly machine gun, and shook confusedly. The delirium had been so real. And she suddenly, softly laughed, surprising herself and him.
His eyes shifted to her and rested for a quick, assessing moment, blond brow cocked. “That was an odd reaction. Not something I had expected, at any rate,” he commented, turning his attention back to the road.
She chuckled again as the humour of the situation hit her. “Hijacked and then kidnapped within one week,” she burbled. “It’s unbelievable. If my family only knew!”
A strange look from him that she couldn’t interpret, and then, “Did any of your family contact you in the hospital?”
“Oh, yes. I was on the receiving end of a thirty minute lecture over the ’phone, interspersed with hysteria and guilt-inspiring tears,” sh
e said wryly. “It was all, naturally, as I’d always suspected, my fault. They all hope that by now I have learned a little sense, though they have realised they shouldn’t expect it.”
And she wondered at the suddenly ferocious frown that lowered on his face for a good ten minutes. “Naturally,” he said drily.
She watched his brooding countenance for some time as silence fell over them both. He asked suddenly, surprising her as he threw a glance her way, “Are you afraid of me, Les?”
She was immensely taken aback at that, and frowned at his profile, at his odd question. “No,” she replied slowly. She noticed how tensely she had been holding herself and knew that he had felt it. “No.” She wondered many things, as her body then relaxed and exhaustion set in. She slept.
Evening set in and when Leslie opened her eyes the sun was setting to their left. That meant they were travelling north. She looked out and her gaze encountered heavily wooded land, which was only as she had expected. She adjusted her seat and came upright.
“How much further?” she asked, passing a weary hand over her eyes to dash away the blurred vision. She blinked.
His gaze swept over her. “Almost there now,” he replied shortly. She nodded dully. His glance changed to a look of concern, but she didn’t see it, as she turned to look out the window. She let her head fall back, feeling absurdly weak.
The drive continued for some minutes on that particular road, and then he made a quick turn to the left, drove some distance, and turned right. This road was considerably smaller, and not well paved. He slowed the car and eased on to a gravel lane. Trees were thick on either side, and the long reaching branches created a leafy canopy overhead, dark green, light green, brown and speckles of yellow sunlight. Leslie guessed that the wood covered some distance, for it was mature, with old oaks jutting towards the sky with majestic heaviness, and fully developed maples and beeches. She sat passively and let the quiet of the forest seep into her bones. This was a good place.
They soon came upon a small cabin that nestled into a small pocket made by several tall trees. Scott slowed, and then he pulled the car to a stop, parking at the side of the building. The engine stilled. He sat there for a few minutes, silently, head resting back, eyes taking in the scene. He seemed to be waiting. Leslie looked around her without comment. Then she reached back and took her walking cane, and opened her car door. Standing was rather painful, and she couldn’t conceal her hiss as she put her weight on her bad leg and felt the torn muscles and stitches take the strain. She leaned heavily on the cane.
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