The Great Escape

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  An alarmed yelp from Joan had him jerking around. Look at her. With all that flailing about she’s doing, in about a half second, she’ll be on her butt. Shaking his head, glad to be out of his thoughts, Dan sprinted forward and put out a hand to steady her. “Whoa. Easy does it. Don’t fight them.”

  “Give me your gun, and I’ll show you a fair fight, Sheriff,” she snapped.

  Dan chuckled. “I’ll pass. Here, like this.” He adjusted her hold, showed her the desired motions. “See? Don’t make it so hard.”

  Within seconds, she smoothed out her motions and raised a happy face to him. “Look at me—I’m skiing!”

  Again Dan laughed at her. “I’ll be the judge.” He continued to watch her, telling himself he needed to make sure she got her legs under her. But his subconscious knew better. What did you feel when you kissed her last night? Was it real? It was, wasn’t it? Come on, buddy, give her a chance.

  Again Joan bleated out her alarm. Again Dan rushed to steady her, to touch her…liking the feel of her too damned much. And why did he? She was exasperating, frustrating, infuriating. He bit back a grin. And funny, charming, intelligent. Scared, brave, sarcastic. All that and more. Admit it. She excites the hell out of you. What you feel is passion. Passion for her. And passionately about her. In other words, you care, Dan. A lot.

  “Sheriff, you’re in la-la land. Why are you staring at me like that?”

  Dan jerked back to the moment. “Was I staring?”

  “Yeah. Like I’m something really yummy on a stick.” With that, she went back to her ski-pole maneuverings.

  But Dan’s attention remained riveted on her. He surprised himself with the realization that he didn’t particularly like liking her. If he stuck around, if he helped her as he’d said he would, she’d make him care about someone again, he could just feel it. She’d make him risk it all, make him hurt again. Why? Because she needed him? Or was it that he needed her…needed her zaniness, her fighting spirit and sheer pluck, even in the face of such desperate odds?

  Dan sobered even more, stared at Joan’s now-thoughtful expression as it rested on him, and saw something meaningful reflected in those green eyes. It staggered him, forced him to brace his knees or fall to them in the snow. What if he couldn’t save her? What if she was convicted, and the state administered a lethal injection to put her to death? Bile rose to the back of his throat. No, forget this—he couldn’t afford to care. Refused to.

  And so he said, “Let’s get on the road.” With that, he turned and made his way over to the other pair of skis. With the practiced ease of years of skiing experience, he strapped himself onto them. And denied that he burned with an anger that he couldn’t name, an anger that he couldn’t direct to the guilty person. Because he didn’t know who it was. Her or himself.

  He forced a coolness he didn’t feel into his words. “Where we’re going, there’re other people. You’re still under a warrant. So, once we’re there, I’m duty bound to keep you cuffed and separated from the population. Understand?”

  “Yes,” she said from behind him. “I’m not to forget who I am, who you are, or why we’re here. Or there. As if I could.” A moment later, though, she called his name. “Dan? After Snake River, what’s going to happen to me?”

  Dan clenched his jaw, bit back a curse he wanted to yell at the world for putting him here. Still down on one knee, he looked over his shoulder, sought her gaze. Saw the uncertain puckering of that bottom lip, the vulnerable tilt of her eyes. His heart lurched. Dammit. Again anger welled up in him. This time, it had her name on it. How dare she light a spark in him, threaten his world, and then not do a damned thing to help herself—or allow him to help her? He stood up and turned expertly on his skis to face her.

  Hands to his waist, he repeated, “What’s going to happen? The same things that would’ve happened without the snow or the crash, Joan. When the weather clears and the roads are passable, we go down to Taos. And then I turn you over to the state for prosecution. And possibly execution.”

  Her expression crumpled. Good. No doubt his raw assessment hit home. She lowered her gaze, stared at her ski blades.

  Dan’s hands fisted so tightly, they hurt. He wanted to shake her until she cried, until she hurt the way he did, until he’d wrenched the truth out of her. Almost afraid of what he might be capable of, so strongly did he feel right now, he took several deep, calming breaths. Only when he felt more in control did he say, “Joan, look at me, please.”

  She raised her head, gave it a toss to flip her ponytail back over her shoulder. And then silently stared at him, waiting. How should he put this? “No games here, no lies. It’s just you and me. I want the truth. Did you kill Tony LoBianco? I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but yes or no—either way—I can help you. I will help you. Either way.”

  Joan took a breath. Blinked. Looked haunted. And then said, “And that’s the part I don’t get. Why should you help me? What’s in it for you?”

  Dan turned his cold face up to the bruised sky, dark with snow clouds. His chest hurt from her question. What was in it for him? This was too raw, too strong, too real. He didn’t want to feel this. Then, fine. He heaved out his breath and looked back at her, shrugging. “Nothing’s in it for me. Forget it. Can’t say I didn’t try.”

  With that, he grabbed the loose end of the rope tied around her and fastened it around himself. He felt her gaze on his face but refused to look at her until they were tied together and it was time for his final instructions. When he did meet her gaze, his heart lurched yet again. Her green eyes were dull with mistrust. He pretended not to notice. “There’s no way in hell this is going to work—and I mean our skiing in tandem like this—but we don’t have much choice. You ready?”

  Frowning, her bottom lip puckered, she nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”

  SO HE HAD TO STAND her on her feet again, Joan fumed. So he again had to adjust the rope that bound them together. So? She watched Dan sidestep in his skis as he once again—okay, the tenth time since they’d left the cabin four hours ago—left her standing there and crabbed his way back down the mountainside. She could hear him mimicking her. Did he think she was deaf?

  “I told you I’m ready. Of course I’m ready. Why wouldn’t I be ready?” His singsong voice accompanied each angry step. “Ready as I’ll ever be, she says. Ha. How about not at all ready, not in this lifetime?”

  “I can hear you,” she called to his retreating back. “I told you I can’t ski. Is it my fault it’s taken us four hours to go about ten feet? I can’t help running into you and knocking you down. Whose idea was it for you to tie this rope between us anyway—” She stopped when he whipped around to look at her.

  Almost at the end of their shared rope, he pointedly staked his poles in the snow and glared up at her.

  Joan returned his look. Not that he could see much of her expression. He’d tied her parka hood so tight that she had to look out at the world through a tiny little gathered circle that revealed only those features right in the middle of her face. Two beady, goggle-covered eyes, the tip of her nose and barely a lip.

  “Be quiet and let’s get moving, Joan. I’m waiting.”

  And you can wait until hell freezes over. She considered her icy surroundings and amended, And you can wait until pigs fly. Who’d he think he was, giving her a direct order? As if she’d just salute and obey. So there she stood, wobbling unsteadily and windmilling her arms in an effort to keep her precarious balance. She raised a covert eyebrow and silently dared him to come up here and make her do as he said.

  “If I come up there, it’ll be to untie you and leave you here.”

  “I should be so lucky,” she yelled. Dan made a move toward her. Joan…well, changed her mind about cooperating and squatted in a crouch atop her skis. She grabbed at the umbilical-cord rope connecting her to him. And then bounced a bit until she felt her weight was distributed and she had her balance. “Okay, let’s go. I’m ready!”

  Dan nodded that he’d h
eard her and muttered, “I’ve heard this before.” Then, with practiced grace, he turned to face the trail he was blazing. One mighty shove and they were off—yet again. Dan grimaced as the rope around his waist pulled taut against the drag of Joan’s body at the other end. If she had her eyes closed again when he needed to stop, like the last time…

  Why would she close her eyes? Look at this scenery. Sliding past them was a tranquil winter wonderland of packed snow and white-dusted pines. Then suddenly, Dan realized, they were doing it—they were skiing in tandem. Hey, this wasn’t so bad. Pretty smooth, even. So why couldn’t they have done this four hours ago, before Agony of Defeat Mishap 769 during which she actually lost her ski poles?

  It was his fault she’d lost them, just ask her. He was the one, she insisted, who’d sent her poles airborne off that cliff and made her lose them. Only to have them rain back down, like knitting needles, and narrowly miss pinning them to the earth. As if that wasn’t enough, she was still defending herself regarding that whole incident involving the nonexistent mountain goats.

  Just then, in the present, and right in his path—much to his frozen, teeth-chattering horror—a jagged ledge of rock loomed. Oh, hell. He didn’t have time to go around it. He had to stop. Joan, I hope you’re paying attention. Dan swung to the right, knees bent, skis dug in, and slid to a picture-perfect stop about two feet from the ramplike ledge of rock. He huffed out a relieved breath. Too soon. Joan squawked out a warning. His legs spread, Dan pivoted to see what…Oh no. She was going to…ski right between his legs. If he was lucky.

  At the last second, Dan leaped to one side and hit the ground hard, eating snow. A split second later, Joan came hurtling and screaming right past him. When the rope binding them snapped taut, she came to an abrupt halt and collapsed to the ground.

  A moment of silence was observed before Dan jumped up and pitched a cursing fit as he wrenched himself free of his skis. Then he was standing over Joan. She lay on her side, looking stunned. She blinked repeatedly and stared at…nothing. Dan huffed out a white cloud of breath. Dammit. His anger—as always in the face of her willingness to follow his lead, no matter how dumb the idea turned out to be—evaporated. Cursing himself now, he bent over her, grabbed her by the parka and wrenched her to her feet…well, her skis. Or tried to. Too many moving parts. It was like unfolding a stubborn lawn chair.

  Then, spitting, blinking, wiping the snow off her goggle lenses with her mittened hands, Joan gained her balance and—Dan sighed—began griping. “This is not working. It’s like trying to ski down a giant waffle iron. We have been introduced to every log, stump, exposed rock or antlered creature for miles around. Just end this torture—toss me off the side of the mountain.”

  Dan brushed at her, too, trying to help, but’ getting mad again. “What do you think I’ve been trying to do? I have never seen anybody so uncoordinated.”

  “I told you I couldn’t ski. I wasn’t lying.” She smacked his hands away.

  “It’s hard to tell with you.”

  “Ha, ha. Look, I’m fully prepared to sit right here and die. I’m soaked through. I feel like a swizzle stick in a frozen drink. So I’m not going another step…or skip…or slide, or whatever it is you do on skis.”

  “You don’t do a damned thing on skis.”

  “Is that not what I’ve been saying, beginning with when we were sitting up in that tree? Now, I propose I save New Mexico a bunch of time and money and just end it right here. I don’t even care, at this point”

  “Well, dammit, I do.”

  She stilled, cocked her head and roved her gaze over his face. “You do?”

  Suddenly he was sure that he did, on some level that had nothing to do with official duties or that woman-in-jeopardy thing the department shrink warned him against. “Yes,” he said truthfully. But then he lied about the reasons. “The countywide elections are in full swing and Ben Halverson is up for reelection. He can win, too—if he doesn’t get hung first because we can’t solve the LoBianco murder. So, yeah, I care.”

  Her expression changed, hardened, closed off. “How selfish of me. Had I known, I would’ve killed Mr. LoBianco sooner, turned myself in and made you guys heroes. And just eliminated that whole campaigning phase for you.”

  Dan’s expression hardened right along with hers. “A word of advice here. If you’re going to stick to your I-killed-my-lover story, you ought to drop the ‘Mr. LoBianco’ and call him Tony. That would make it a little more believable.”

  Joan leaned toward him. “Go to hell, Sheriff.”

  “For the last time, I’m a deputy, not the sheriff. And I’m beginning to think this—right here with you—is hell.” With that, he grabbed the rope around her waist and began unknotting it, not caring if he jerked her around.

  “What are you doing?” Joan shoved against his hands and then his chest.

  As solid as the mountain behind him, Dan ignored her protests and kept working, freeing first her then himself from the rope. Only then did he square his jaw and say through clenched teeth, “Quit shoving me or I’ll fashion a noose out of this rope and loop it over the nearest branch.”

  “I dare you,” Joan taunted. And then gasped when he gripped the rope in both hands. But he just tossed it to the ground and bent over to unbuckle her from her skis. Half expecting her to clobber him while he was down there, Dan hurried his hands and straightened up. Without a word passing between them, he grabbed her parka at the shoulder seam and plucked her off the misused blades.

  Then he wrenched his goggles up, hoping the heat of anger he still felt blazed from his eyes. “I’ve had it. I’m ready to duke it out with you right here. I was going to wait until we got to Snake River, but forget that. It’s here and now. We’re putting the gloves on. So get ready to rumble.”

  Through the tint of her goggles, he could see Joan looking at his gloved hands and then her own sopping-wet mittens, and then again at him. “Has your brain frozen solid?”

  “Probably. But we’re still going to have it out.”

  She raised her goggles, the better to show him her own glare. “Fine, but I get equalizers—like some rocks and a big stick. And no fair pulling your gun.”

  Puzzlement had him frowning. “What? I’m talking about answers, Joan. Truthful answers. Right here, right now.”

  “Answers? Well…whew! I thought you meant we were going mano a mano. But…too bad, because I don’t feel like talking right here in the great outdoors. And you can’t make me.”

  Dan jutted his jaw out dangerously. “Try me.”

  Joan’s bottom lip poked out. She looked him up and down. Dan couldn’t believe it. Was she actually considering trying him? But then she slumped, and grumped. “Fine. So, do you think I just got up one day and decided to confess to a murder? No, I didn’t. Things happened. I didn’t ask for it. And you don’t need it. So, forget it—I won’t involve you.”

  One giant step had him up close and holding her by the arms. “Look at me. I’m involved up to my eyeballs. I don’t need you to protect me. I chose to place myself in danger, and I chose to pursue the truth. So get real. And quit trying to be so noble.”

  “Noble? Me?” The red in her cheeks deepened. She wrenched out of his grasp. “I don’t think so. And how do I get real, Dan? Tell me how.”

  “I can and I will. But you make sure you want to hear it. Because, like it or not—and I know I don’t—there’s something here between us. You’ve got my attention, okay? Like no one and nothing has in the past five years. And I, for one, intend to find out exactly why that is.”

  Joan blinked. “Man, you are some piece of work, Sheriff. Okay, it’s not getting any warmer, so I’ll bite. Tell me what you think it is between us.”

  He looked into her eyes, deepening the quiet around them. Then he ran a hand over his mouth. “It’s physical. And strong. But more than that…I don’t know what. I just know we have something between us. Can you feel it? Right here?” He poked a finger against her parka-covered chest, right over h
er heart.

  Joan looked down at his finger against her chest. Her defenses tumbled like wooden blocks. What he was suggesting—that he felt something for her, something strong enough to warrant discussion right here in the waning, freezing daylight—caused emotion to well up in Joan like rising mercury. She fought tears as she looked at him. “I do. But I can’t, Dan, not where I’m going. Don’t ask me to feel this now.”

  “I didn’t ask.” He removed a glove and rubbed his hand over his beard-stubbled jaw. “And you can, Joan. You can feel. You don’t have to throw your life away like this. Hale, Carter, even Mackleman told me how they tried to help you, tried to get you to talk to them, to trust them. But you wouldn’t. And now you won’t let me in. Why?”

  Joan stood mute for long seconds, concentrating only on her heart’s increased cadence and trying to find the right words. But Dan beat her to it. “Look at me, Joan.” She did. He firmed his lips and then said, “If you’ve never listened to anybody before in your life, listen to me now. You are safe with me. Don’t shut me out. If you do, you could very well lose your life.”

  Joan wanted to run from the fear, from the truth…into his arms. But she didn’t move, only fisted her hands. “What you don’t understand is, either way, guilty or innocent, I stand to lose my life, Dan.”

  He threw his hands up and raised his voice. “How can being innocent cost you your life? I don’t get that. Just like I don’t get how you can be so willing to trust your fate to a faceless legal system, but not to me. I’m part of that system, and I’m standing right here in front of you, Joan. And telling you I care. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  Joan frowned, unable to speak, unable to answer him. Because she didn’t know how.

  Dan sighed out his breath and pressed his point. “Do you even know what I’m talking about? I’m not talking about a legal defense. I’m talking about you and me. Us. Whenever I look at you, I…dammit, I believe again. I begin to hope. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”