The Great Escape

by Amanda Carpenter

  “Dee?” he questioned softly, a white smile touching his firm lips. She stopped to look up at him, eyes wide and innocent. “Are you making this up as you go along?”

  She nodded, mischief in her eyes, and he started to laugh. “But,” she hastened to tell him, “I did meet a warm and sensitive man a few days ago.”

  “Oh, you did?” He bent his head and began to trail a line of tiny kisses from her neck to her shoulder, up to her mouth for a long, long while, and then back again. “Do I happen to know this person? I’m not sure if I entirely approve of you making friends that easily with a total stranger…”

  “Of course you know him,” she whispered into his ear, pressing a kiss to his jaw and feeling the roughness of his unshaven face. He nuzzled her, then stopped still as she continued blithely, “You remember Chuck, the trucker, don’t you?”

  And she shrieked with devilment and laughter as he tightened two warning hands on her with a mock-serious growl of anger. After a few more minutes of this kind of play, Mike slapped her hip and said with a sigh, “I’ll bet it’s some ungodly time of day and we should have been up hours ago. It’s time you and I were out of bed, my girl.”

  He slid out of the covers and stood, a quick, fluid movement, and as she stared at the smooth strength of his muscular body, she went warm with remembrance. He was turning to look at her, though, and she ducked under the covers again, giggling. One seeking hand came under the covers in search of her, and she slapped at it. “No, I won’t! The bed’s too warm—ow! All right—all right! I’ll get out, for heaven’s sake, just stop tickling me! You wombat, I’ll bite if you don’t let go of me—oof!” That last was as he scooped her up high into his arms, swung her around in a dizzying circle, and deposited her in a heap on the crumpled bed. Her hair went flying and her legs were all tangled up in a heap, and her eyes were such a vivid, brilliant, flashing blue, they captured his attention and held him still. She was laughing up at him as he towered over her, and as he watched, her smile slowly died away to leave a more serious, perplexed pucker around the eyes.

  Dee stared at him, feeling all the questions and the incomprehensions of the previous day well up inside her. The questions she had been too exhausted, too overwhelmed, too drained to ask herself last night now clamored for attention. “Mike, about yesterday—I don't understand any of it. I don’t see why those men came after me in broad daylight. It—it doesn’t make sense, does it?” And the look in her eyes as she stared at him was lost, bewildered, and somehow imploring.

  Something clicked over in his face, something slight, indefinable, and so tangibly real that she stared, harder. It was, inexplicably, a barrier. “What don’t you understand, love?” he asked calmly, sitting on the bed.

  Puzzlement quivered through her. “Well…for instance, why do you suppose those two men abducted me after attempting to and failing the night before? Once might be a random incident, but twice? Come on, now, really—”

  His jaw clenched, briefly, and she seized the smoky embers of a deep anger that had not quite died down yet. “I expect because they were afraid you’d seen them the night before and wanted to get rid of you before you identified them and pressed charges,” he replied smoothly.

  “But it was nearly pitch black that night!” she protested against this line of reasoning. It seemed illogical. “I didn’t even get the slightest hint of what they looked like.”

  “But you marked one of them quite definitely with that nasty bite of yours,” he pointed out, after a moment’s reflection.

  Dee nibbled at a finger thoughtfully, frowning. “That’s true. But it still seems a bit much, don’t you think?” He didn’t answer, and after a moment she shrugged fretfully. “Oh, well, it’s over now, and it doesn’t matter any more! But it’s still strange, and it makes me wonder. One of them said something about having a job to complete, and I never have figured that one out. Oh, and I know that the house they found was totally by chance. One of them had overheard in the doctor’s office about it being vacant.”

  “There,” said Mike immediately. “That’s your answer. The job they had to complete must have been robbing the house.” She stared at him.

  “That hadn’t occurred to me,” she said slowly. “I suppose it’s possible. By the way, however did you manage to find me so conveniently in the nick of time?”

  “I’d managed to dive into my car and follow them a ways,” he said, smiling crookedly. “But then I managed to lose them in the residential area where that house was. The streets are very winding and confusing, and I was sweating out a whole host of fears before I finally noticed a whiff of smoke coming from the house you were in. It was hidden from the road, and I’d gone up on the driveway purely out of a rather hopeless curiosity, wondering who in their right mind would be burning trash on a day like yesterday.”

  “How very strange,” she murmured. “It was my thought exactly, before I realized the house was on fire. Then, of course, everything made sense.”

  He said dryly, “Of course. Anyway, I noticed it was the house, too, and then went to the front door to see if anyone was at home. The lock, I saw, had been forced and I became suspicious enough to break inside. I called for you, experimentally, and you answered. The rest is history.”

  “Well!” she said, laughing in a way that was not amused at all. “Am I glad you’re of an inquisitive nature! Otherwise I’d be past history right now.” And a shudder quivered through her shoulders at the cold, frightening thought.

  Mike was suddenly brisk. “Come on, up now for sure. We have a lot to do today, and more of our journey yet to go. Hurry, or I’ll lay first claim to the shower and use all the hot water!” Dee smiled, reluctantly, but something niggled at the back of her mind, even as she obediently rose to pad into the plain white bathroom and turn on the taps. She couldn’t pinpoint the problem, not even to herself, for she wasn’t sure she’d correctly picked up the unspoken messages Mike emitted.

  The slight impression that something was not quite right haunted her throughout their quickly snatched meal, in a restaurant not far from the motel where they had stayed. Mike was responsive enough to her conversation, and yet she noticed his eyes straying to the window when he thought she wasn’t looking. He smiled quickly enough at her jokes and good humour, and it didn’t seem to reach his eyes. He responded quickly to her outstretched hand, tucking his big warm one into hers, and yet it was done with a sombre expression that had her more than a little worried.

  She helped carry the suitcases to the car later on, watching him covertly. After he had taken the key to the front office while she waited in the car, she saw him come out of the building slowly and stop, his head turned to the road south, away from her, the spring breeze fluttering through his dark hair. The set to his shoulders was stiff. Then he moved, breaking the brief illusion that she had felt when he had stood so absolutely still, like a marble statue, no feeling and no expression on his face. When he got into the car and put the key to the ignition and yet made no move to start the car, she finally spoke.

  “What’s wrong?” She watched him, worried. Silence, no movement, no indication that he had heard her. “Mike, something’s been troubling you all day long. What is it? Where are we going? Why aren’t you talking to me?”

  The questions were spoken quietly, and she tried to sound placid enough so that he would know that she was not worried and trusted him, but something quivered through her words despite her efforts. He didn’t turn to look at her and his hand went out to the ignition. The car purred to life. “What do you mean, I haven’t been talking to you? I’ve been talking to you all day long,” he replied expressionlessly. Dee jerked in her seat.

  “No, you haven’t. You’ve been making surface noises to appease me. You haven’t really said anything to me since we got out of bed. Is—is it me? Is it something I’ve said, or—or done?” Her voice wobbled betrayingly at the end, and she caught her breath, furious at herself for showing such distress at his uncommunicative mood.

&nbs
p; Out of the corner of her eye she saw him glance sharply at her unsteady voice, and his hand flashed out, caught hold of her fingers and gripped them so tightly it hurt. She held on to the pain as if it were a reassurance, which in a way it was. “You’re referring to last night and this morning, I take it,” he said quietly. Dee stared out of her window blindly and nodded, forgetting that he was most likely watching the road. He apparently saw it, though, for he was responding promptly. “Dee, are you sorry for last night? I know it hurt you a little bit, but honestly, love, it doesn’t every time—”

  “Oh, God!” she exploded, hiding all her pent-up uncertainties behind a sudden spurt of anger. “Don’t patronise me! I know I’m young, but I’m certainly not ignorant of the facts of life—they do teach things in school, you know!” She stopped abruptly, felt his hand withdraw, and her voice changed. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re regretting last night, not I. Is it because I’m so young? I believe it’s called statutory rape when a legal adult has sex with a minor.” The words were staccato-swift and cutting as she struggled with her foolish desire not to cry.

  “Stop it, just stop it!” Mike’s voice rose over hers and she did, clamming up and staring away from him. “All right, maybe I’m wondering if we did the right thing last night, what’s wrong with that, for God’s sake? For crying out loud, Dee, I’m twenty-nine years old—eleven years older than you. You aren’t even eighteen!”

  “And if I’d been forty?” she queried chillingly, and heard his impatient sigh. “What then, answer me that? It wouldn’t have mattered so much, would it, that you were eleven years younger than I was? You’d have considered yourself quite capable of dealing with it, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he gritted. His knuckles were white as his hands tightened spasmodically on the steering wheel.

  “Why is it ridiculous?” she shouted, spilling all of her turbulent emotions out and sensing his wince. “I knew what the hell I was doing, didn’t I? What if I’d been a forty-year-old virgin? It still wouldn’t have mattered so much—don’t shake your head like that—it wouldn’t! I can see it in your eyes. Damn it, you’re looking at statistics again, and you aren’t really seeing me under all that! When will it stop, Mike? When will people stop looking at me and saying, ‘there’s the millionaire heiress’ or ‘there’s the seventeen-year-old’! Do you know how I’ve been patronized at the restaurant, just because people think that if I’m a waitress I can’t be that sharp in the brains department?”

  “I can’t overlook the facts, no matter how you may want me to!” he snapped, a host of thunderclouds lowering on his brow.

  “I don’t want you to! It’s a fact that I was a virgin and I’m not now, and you’re the one who took my virginity!” she hissed. “And it’s a fact that last night was something very special to me, and I think that if you’d let it, it would be special to you, too! And mister, it’s a fact that you can either look at what we had last night as just having sex or making love. I don’t want you to ignore the facts, man, I just want you to have the right perspective on them! Would you have minded so much if I hadn’t been a virgin?”

  Amazingly, a slight, quick smile quirked at his lips. “I probably wouldn’t be feeling so guilty,” he admitted ruefully.

  “Well, then,” she said hardly, watching closely for his reaction, “if I’d known, I would have lost my virginity in some raunchy little motel room with a total stranger, and then you wouldn’t have to be feeling so bad.”

  She was totally unprepared for his viciously bitten off oath, or the violent swerve of the car cutting off the highway and parking jerkily at the side of the road. He reached for her, grabbed her by the shoulders, and began to shake her hard. “Don’t you ever, ever say a thing like that again!” he snarled, and she wondered at his anger, even while a slow glow of warmth spread through her. “My God! Don’t you have any more respect for yourself than that? I’ve never—”

  She stopped him simply by reaching forward and pressing her soft lips to his. Then she leaned back and smiled at him. “And aren’t you glad I had more respect for myself and you by making it much, much more special to me than just a tawdry one-night stand?” she asked him softly. “Mike, do you really regret it? If so, I’m very sorry. I just can’t.”

  He relaxed his grip on her and sighed, replying, “Maybe I think I should regret it. Maybe that’s why I’m putting myself through such throes of guilt, I don’t know. And yes, it was very, very special to me, and I’ll treasure the memory.” He brought his lips down and caressed hers gently.

  But she drew back and frowned into his shirt. “Mike, why won’t you tell me where we’re going? Trust is one thing, but this is going a bit far, surely?”

  He looked at her a moment. “I’ve been putting it off,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes with his fingers. “And you’re right, I should have told you sooner. We’re going to Knoxville.”

  It was a flat statement, brooking no argument, and yet he paused, watching her closely. At his words, Dee felt a deep blow of dread in her chest, but she strove to overcome it, thinking to herself, trust. He wants me to trust him. Trust him, Dee. She drew a deep, shaky breath and asked, “How long are we staying, then?” And for the life of her, she couldn’t help looking the question why? at him, tensed. Why home, why now?

  He relaxed slightly, smiled a little, and he cupped her cheek in that familiar way. “You surpass all my expectations,” he told her quietly. “We are, my girl, going to my apartment. We’re going to test out that once-tried theory of yours and really see if the one place no one will look for you is at your own home base. My apartment is just downtown, not fifteen minutes from your house. And if my guess is right and if you manage to keep pretty much hidden, we should be able to limp along tolerably well for a while.”

  Dee felt stunned, bewildered. “But why? Why can’t we go somewhere else for a while? Why do we have to go back home?” She stared at him, feeling that odd barrier from the morning, getting the strangest feeling that he wasn’t telling her something, but she still couldn’t pinpoint what it was. “I don’t understand.”

  Mike straightened in his seat and stared out into the golden day. “You said to me not too long ago that what you needed most was time to think, to decide what you were going to do. Have you made a decision?”

  She hesitated, feeling swamped with uncertainty, puzzlement and the desire to tell him just how she really felt about him. But it was too new to her, too early for that, and she was silent a moment. Then, reluctantly, “No, I haven’t.”

  His jaw hardened. “Well, what I’m going to do is buy you that time you need.” Silence, and he muttered something under his breath, something quick and stern sounding, and very strange. Dee suspected that he hadn’t really meant her to hear it, but she had very good hearing and she picked it up in spite of the softness with which it was spoken. “I’m going to buy you all the time in the world.”

  And she couldn’t understand its gist, just as she couldn’t understand the element of inexplicability to his behaviour, but since she had forced the issue so far, she didn’t want to ask him anything else just yet.

  He started the car again, pulled out into the barren stretch of highway and silence reigned for a long, long time in the confines of the car. And she sank back into her seat and puzzled at the many unexplained and unexplainable mysteries in her life.

  They stopped soon to stretch their legs and to get a cold drink, and by then she had simply given up on her endless speculating and just concentrated on each moment. Life had begun to take on an element of unreality for her, for the events in the past four days had become too much to handle. Her emotions had been yanked all out of whack, and her whole schedule had been overturned, and now she had to reconstruct something new for herself. She was quite afraid, because she had settled into a comforting groove. She had known where she would be staying the next week, and she had begun to make plans and have hopes and dreams of the simple, every day sort: planning next week�
��s menu according to her budget; the television specials she had looked forward to; whether she could afford that blue dress on display that she’d been eyeing for several days. Now she didn’t know what to expect, or where she would next lay her head. It bewildered her so much that she had to simply shut down and cope with only non-essential, commonplace things.

  It was strange, too, how she caught herself looking around for Mike and making sure that he was near. She’d never really done that before except when she had been a young child and had been too young to explore without her parents. She found that she was trying to reassure herself of his presence and support, and in a way this angered her, for she had become quite proud of her self-sufficiency early in life. She began to withdraw in little ways, and not in any particular way that he would especially notice, but he gradually stopped making general conversation as he sensed her silent mood.

  Dee became increasingly grim as they neared the familiar, once-loved area she knew so well, the spring air of northern Ohio giving way to a more balmy warmth and greenery. She was conscious of Mike’s flickered, questioning glances, but was in no mood to tell him of the strange feelings that were bombarding her. She felt that she was travelling further and further into a strange darkness that invaded her brain and hampered her thought processes. No matter where she turned her head, she saw darkness, in spite of the fact that the sun was benignly shining and the birds were blithely singing in chirrupy spurts. And the darkness that she saw and felt was an unreasoning dread. She was suddenly able to understand why her later memories of Kentucky were dark and misted over with a heavy veil. It was a cloud of remembered unhappiness.

  She dozed fitfully, then she sank into a murky sleep that caught at her blood and forced it to slug slowly through her veins, and someone was really chasing her this time, and it wasn’t Mike but an unknown menacing stranger, and she tried to run and run, but she was so hampered by her lifeless limbs that she couldn’t get anywhere. “I can’t move,” she whimpered, and jerked with fright as she felt a warm hand descend on to her quaking shoulder, and she was caught, trapped, mired down in mud. She knew a terrible sinking feeling as she realised that she was caught for good. She would never get away or be free again… “Trapped! I’m trapped!” she sobbed dryly, and was pulled into wakefulness by insistent hands.