Taking the Heat

by Brenda Novak

  Morning would come, and with it the hot sun. She knew that was the one thing that wouldn’t change.

  Crawling back into the cave, she listened carefully for Tucker’s breathing. Once her eyes had adjusted to the lack of light outside and she’d gained her bearings, she’d actually been able to see fairly well. But the darkness in the cave was total; she couldn’t see his form, and she couldn’t hear anything. Using her hands, she located him again, just to be sure he hadn’t moved since she’d been out. Then she lay down a couple of feet away and squeezed her eyes shut. All that digging had taken its toll. She hadn’t felt very strong to begin with; now she was utterly spent. Yet she couldn’t sleep. She was too wet, too chilled, too uncomfortable on the hard ground, and her strange surroundings made things even worse.

  Think of David and Allie, she told herself. Everything at home was probably fine, which was what mattered most. And help would surely arrive in the morning.

  But the promise of future relief couldn’t warm her now.

  Sitting up, she chafed her arms and eyed the darkness that enveloped Randall Tucker. He was sleeping so soundly. If she could only get warm, she’d be able to sleep, too.

  Fortunately he was turned away from her. She inched close, being careful not to actually touch him. When he didn’t stir, she allowed herself to press closer still. Soon, she could feel his back warming the front of her and gratefully curled her legs beneath his to take full advantage. She was so cold, so terribly cold. And Randall Tucker was so wonderfully warm….

  THE ABSENCE OF NOISE finally woke Tucker. Prison was a constant cacophony of snoring, talking, groaning, grunting, cursing, murmuring, rattling, clattering, clanging, buzzing and screeching. Living in a cage was like living inside a large cement mixer that churned continually, but the world was silent now, peaceful. The air smelled clean, and although the ground was slightly harder than his bunk, something soft was pressed to his backside—something that felt familiar and made his heart leap into his throat.

  Turning slowly, Tucker caught his breath. Sure enough, Officer Hadley had migrated across the few feet that had originally separated them and was clinging to him as if he were the man in that picture in her wallet.

  He rolled onto his back. She burrowed closer, accepting without question the added comfort of resting her head on the relative softness of his shoulder. Her hand slid up his chest, and Tucker’s stomach did a flip-flop. It had been so long….

  She sighed in approval and seemed to fall into a deeper sleep. He lay still, unsure whether or not he welcomed this unexpected contact. She felt good. There was no denying that. The softness of her body molded perfectly against his side, and the solid weight of her halfway on top of him was a satisfying sensation. But the craving she evoked on another level made him hesitate between scooping her closer and shoving her away. He didn’t need this. This made him weak, cost him focus, left him vulnerable. And he hadn’t been vulnerable to anything or anyone since his son had been torn from him.

  But when he breathed deeply he could still catch the subtle scent of her shampoo amid the dust and dirt. Had he never gone to prison, he doubted he would’ve been able to appreciate such a simple thing. Whenever he’d pulled Andrea to him, or any woman before her, he’d either progressed toward lovemaking or continued to watch television or whatever movie they’d rented. Not since he was a teenager had he simply luxuriated in the initial contact between a man and a woman, in the scent of a woman’s hair, and it amazed him now that he could take so much for granted.

  Hadley stirred, and Tucker stiffened in preparation for the sudden rejection that would come the moment she opened her eyes and realized who it was that held her. Pride demanded he pull away first. He’d encountered enough scorn since Andrea’s death and wasn’t willing to take any more. But before he could dislodge his arm, he saw that she was already staring up at him.

  She looked startled when she saw him, confirming the fact that she hadn’t realized, until that moment, where she was. But she didn’t immediately shrink away. She smiled. “Good morning.”

  Tucker hesitated, then scowled and yanked his arm out from beneath her so he could get up. Why did she have to constantly surprise him? Why did she always have to behave differently from what he anticipated? He was convicted of first-degree murder. She should look at him with the same repugnance he saw in the faces of the other guards, so he could hate her just as easily. Instead she made him feel as though she could slip beneath his defenses whenever she wanted, and he couldn’t tolerate that. He knew she’d ultimately spit in his face. She had to. They were on opposite sides of the law.

  “Where’s the water?” he asked.

  She shoved a hand through her tangled hair. “Outside.”

  “What’s it doing there?” He ducked through the opening of the cave but couldn’t see anything.

  When she appeared and pointed it out to him, he blinked in surprise. Sometime during the night, she’d dug a hole. A puddle of water had collected on a piece of plastic over the jug. As he watched, Hadley removed the small rock in the center and let it drain through.

  “Looks like a desert still,” he said.

  “I’m from Oregon. I’ve never heard of a desert still.” She carefully removed the plastic, so the surrounding dirt wouldn’t spill into their water, and lifted the jug out of the hole. “It was raining when I woke up, and I figured we should take advantage it.”

  “A desert still uses the sun to draw moisture right out of the ground, or whatever plants you toss inside, and it’s perfectly sterile. With a piece of plastic and a jug, you can make water out of urine.”

  She made a face as she held the water up to the sun. “I was about to ask whether or not you thought this was safe to drink, but I guess I’ll take my chances. At least I know it’s rainwater. It’s kind of murky, but we have almost a gallon. That should help.”

  “The still was good thinking,” he said. He couldn’t offer more praise than that. He was afraid it might elicit the same sleepy smile she’d given him in the cave, and that smile had shot straight to his groin. “You hungry?”

  “I am. Is there anything left?”

  “Half a sandwich and some carrots, couple of cookies.”

  “You didn’t eat it last night?”

  He’d wanted to. After going ten hours on nothing but oatmeal, stopping at half a sandwich wasn’t easy. But he’d kept looking over at Hadley’s sleeping form, knowing she’d wake hungry, and had saved what he could for her.

  He ducked inside the cave, retrieved the food and brought it out to her.

  “What about you?” she asked, sitting on a flat rock and starting right in.

  Tucker shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

  She raised her brows. “Really? Don’t you want a bite?”

  The innocent look of expectation on her face, her willingness to treat him as an equal despite their positions, reminded him how good she’d felt against him. But he’d become a master at controlling his emotions—he’d had to, just to survive—and he refused to crave what he couldn’t have.

  “No.” Glancing away, he turned his attention to the valley below and the reddish hue of sunrise. A man didn’t see a sight like that from inside the walls of a prison. Other men, free men, saw it all the time, but if they were the way he used to be, they didn’t appreciate it.

  He took a deep breath and decided that even if the police caught him and dragged him back to prison today, or tomorrow, or any day thereafter, seeing this sunrise had made the whole escape worth attempting.

  “You’re smiling,” she said, intruding on his thoughts. “You don’t do that very often.”

  He immediately sobered. “I haven’t had much to smile about. You just about done? We gotta get going.”

  They had one water jug between them. For both of them to make it out of the desert, they had to stick together. He thought she might question his use of the word “we” but she didn’t.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

 
; He propped his hands on his hips and studied her. “I’m not going back to prison, I’ll tell you that. At least not willingly. But if you want to tag along until we reach someplace safe, that’s fine. Just understand that I’ll do whatever I have to in order to protect my freedom.”

  “Like you did yesterday?” She finished the last of the sandwich, wadded up the paper bag and shoved it into her purse.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just happened to come across me and save my life, remember?”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he lied. And then she gave him that smile, the one that had the same effect as seeing the sun creep over the horizon. She cocked her head when she looked at him, and he could tell something was different—the utter lack of fear or caution in her eyes, perhaps. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t like the change. Probably because he liked it too much.

  “I think I’m on to you,” she said.

  “You don’t know me. If I were you, I wouldn’t take anything for granted.” He put the water inside her purse, slung it on his back and started off, and it wasn’t long before Hadley fell into step beside him.

  It was early yet. As they walked, a jackrabbit darted through some bushes, a lizard scampered over nearby rocks and, a half hour or so later, a bird wheeled and circled overhead. Tucker remembered Hadley’s gun. Before the day was over, he might have to kill a rabbit or a bird for food, if he could. But despite a ravenous hunger, he felt strangely reluctant to do so. Life was too precious in the desert.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BY TEN O’CLOCK the ground had already soaked up most of the moisture from the storm and, other than the occasional shallow puddle, there was little improvement over the dry, sand-colored place the desert had been yesterday.

  Gabrielle squinted over her shoulder at the miles they’d come, glanced up at the blazing sun, then trained her eyes on the miles ahead, and sighed. She was already starting to feel the heat. Perspiration made her sticky. She longed for an elastic to tie up her hair and some cool water that tasted better than what she’d salvaged from the monsoon.

  “How much farther do you think it’ll be before we find a house or a town or something?” she asked.

  Tucker shrugged. She’d tried talking to him several times over the past couple hours, had asked him about his family, where he’d grown up, what he used to do for a living. He’d given her only short sketchy answers that kept his private life very much a mystery and never asked any questions of his own. Once in a while he’d stop, remove the jug from her purse and let her drink. Then he’d take a measured sip and start off again. But that was all the attention he gave her.

  Maybe he was trying to play it smart. Blabbing the intimate details of his life to a corrections officer probably wasn’t the wisest thing in the world. But she had no doubt the police already had the answers to the questions she’d asked. In a criminal investigation, it was standard procedure to document a suspect’s background and upbringing. So what was the harm in talking to help pass the time? She was bored and more than a little curious about her companion.

  Hansen and the others considered Tucker so terribly dangerous. She’d seen how he could fight, yet he didn’t seem particularly violent to her. He seemed to have a conscience, which was something she hadn’t expected, and it was making her wonder how he lived with himself after killing his wife—or whether he was even guilty.

  She hated to believe they could put an innocent man behind bars. The weight of evidence had to be stacked against him, but she knew mistakes were made. She’d once heard a statistic that in the past twenty-five years, more than eighty men had been released from death row after proof of their innocence came to light. Despite all the fail-safes in the system, there was always a chance that Tucker was one of those….

  She opened her mouth to ask about the murder, then firmly closed it again. What if he admitted to killing his wife? She doubted she could handle the gory details right now, when they were completely alone and had no alternative but to rely on each other.

  “What?” he said.

  She stared at the ground, being careful where she stepped. “Nothing.”

  “You thirsty?”

  She was thirsty, but he’d given her a drink a few minutes earlier, so she said no.

  “Then what is it? You keep looking at me as if you have something to say.”

  His face was slightly burned. A thick shadow of beard covered his jaw, making him look dark and rather swarthy. But his clear blue eyes contrasted with the black of his hair, eyelashes and whiskers and seemed anything but evil.

  “Did you do it?” she asked at last.

  He must have known from the tone of her voice what she meant, because he didn’t ask her to clarify. He kept moving for several paces, long enough that Gabrielle assumed he wasn’t going to answer her. Finally he said, “No.”

  She waited, expecting a long sob story of being wrongly accused. Most convicts claimed to be innocent and persecuted by the system. But that was all Tucker said.

  HE’D BE RID OF HER soon. Keeping that thought in mind, Tucker continued walking and refused to look at Hadley, refused to speak to her any more than was absolutely necessary. As soon as they reached the first hint of civilization, he’d dump her, be on his way and never see her again, he told himself. He doubted he’d ever forget her, but he wasn’t willing to think about that, either.

  His eyes on the horizon, he constantly scanned for any sign of human habitation, and felt a flicker of hope when he eventually caught sight of something that looked promising. Was it a building?

  Hadley saw it at the same time. After she’d asked whether or not he’d murdered his wife she’d grown quiet. She’d thrown frequent covert glances at him that indicated she wasn’t quite sure whether or not to believe him. But whatever was going on inside her head was clearly forgotten when she grabbed his arm and pointed. “Do you see that?”

  He nodded.

  “What do you think it is way out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  Tucker didn’t care what it was, as long as it could provide them with food, water and a phone, or any one of the three. “It’s not a convenience store, I can tell you that.”

  “It looks like a house.”

  Wishful thinking at best, Tucker decided. At this distance he couldn’t tell exactly what they’d found, but it didn’t look like a house.

  “Someone could live out here,” she said. “The family I grew up with had relatives that lived off on their lonesome in a shack with a dirt floor and an outhouse and some pigs.”

  Tucker didn’t see any pigs. He didn’t see any animals at all—or any other sign of life. “And they did this in the desert?” he asked.

  “Well, not the desert exactly, but it was kind of a dry wilderness area most of the year. They had to haul in their water using big metal jugs. That makes it similar.”

  Tucker knew she was scrambling to keep her hope alive. She had to realize that the likelihood of finding someone crazy enough to try living out here without irrigation, electricity or plumbing was next to nil. But she’d said something else that caught his attention. She’d talked about the family she’d grown up with as though it wasn’t her family, which made him wonder what kind of childhood she’d had. He might have asked, but he was too focused on trying to remind himself that he didn’t want to know her any better.

  They were moving closer to the building. The white adobe walls standing resolutely against a pale blue sky were definitely manmade, but everything seemed so still, so quiet. For his own hope’s sake, Tucker tried to blame the absence of movement or sound on the heat. But deep down, he knew better.

  “Maybe it’s a desert observatory or an outpost of some kind,” Hadley said, but the look on her face revealed her crushing disappointment. He knew she saw what he saw—an old church in ruins. The chances of finding water or help at such a place weren’t good, which meant they’d be traveling together a little longer.

  Suddenly, Hadley asked for her pu
rse. He gave it to her, and she hurried on ahead of him.

  Tucker was glad to let her go. He’d noticed her blinking more rapidly and didn’t want to see her cry any more than she wanted him to. But when he found her several minutes later, sitting in the shade of a wall that looked as though it had formed some sort of outer courtyard, she wasn’t crying. She was staring, trancelike, at the family picture in her wallet.

  He stood a few steps away, feeling awkward. He wanted to say something to ease her despair but didn’t know what. He’d just checked the old well that had once supplied the church with water. It was only a few steps away, but the rope and bucket were long gone, and it was dry anyway. The underground aquifers had been so badly depleted by pumps and urbanization that a well had to be very deep and carefully placed to find water here. An old well, especially one this old, would never be deep enough. Tucker had tossed a pebble inside, just to be sure—and heard it thump on solid earth.

  “Well’s dry, isn’t it?” she asked without meeting his eyes.

  “Yes,” he answered, knowing she must be wondering what insanity had possessed her to risk never seeing her family again by following an escaped convict into the desert. He wondered the same thing. Was she just doing her job when she’d made that fateful decision? Or had fear for his life really drawn her away from safety?

  Evidently she didn’t know that the life of a convict destined to spend the rest of his days behind bars wasn’t worth such a sacrifice. At least his own life didn’t mean that much to him anymore—not if he had to live in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

  Regardless, the fact that she was here, staring dejectedly at everything she stood to lose, gnawed at his insides, made him angry. He didn’t want to feel anything, least of all her pain. So where was her husband? Why hadn’t he looked out for her? Protected her?