The Defiant Hero
Page 18
But first she had to figure out what to do with John. She peeked out the window again. His car was a midsized model. It would be a little uncomfortable, but it would have to do. “Give me the keys to your car.”
He took them from his pocket. “Meg . . .”
She let him talk, but she didn’t listen. Instead she thought of Amy. Amy who wasn’t dead. Who couldn’t be dead. Whom she wouldn’t allow to be dead, god damn it.
She thought of Amy as she made John empty three sleeping pills into a glass of water, as he carefully poured the mixture down Razeen’s throat.
It occurred to her as he did that that she probably shouldn’t let John touch Razeen—in case he had more of those tracking devices. She didn’t want him planting one on either of them.
So instead of having John load Razeen into the back of her car, she left the unconscious terrorist on the floor of the room. Still focusing on Amy, she led John at gunpoint across the deserted parking lot. It was starting to rain, a cold, relentless drizzle that mirrored her emotions perfectly. She thought of Amy as she used John’s keys to open the trunk of his car. She thought of Amy as she ordered him inside that trunk.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she locked him in, then threw his keys way out into the woods.
It started to pour, and she hurried back into the motel room. A quick trip to the bathroom, and then she’d wrestle Razeen into the car and be back on the road.
Eve had to go to the bathroom.
It had come down to a toss-up between what would upset their captors more—asking to use the facilities, or wetting their pants.
She’d considered simply asking to be allowed to go outside to relieve themselves, but she was afraid once outside, it would be easier simply to take them into the swamp and kill them, rather than bringing them back inside.
She’d had ten more butterscotch candies left.
She’d offered one to the Bear, even though that would be one less candy she could give to Amy. “We need to use a bathroom.”
He’d looked at the candy, looked at her, then had silently turned and gone upstairs.
Eve gave one of the candies to Amy and put the last ones back in her pocket as she listened to the sudden sharp voices from upstairs. The Bear had gone to talk to the woman.
She’d held tightly to Amy. Please God, if you’re real, if you’re up there, now would be the perfect time for that helicopter of SEALs to appear over the house. They’d be sliding down on ropes and . . .
The upstairs door opened, and the Bear came back down the stairs. He was a big man with big feet, and she’d come to recognize the sound of his footsteps.
He came into the room, cut the ropes around their ankles, and gestured for them to follow. His face was grim, and for a moment, Eve didn’t know if they were going to the bathroom or out into the swamp. This man liked them, she was almost positive that he did. Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony, a double tragedy, if he’d been the one ordered to kill them? And he would do it, too. He’d have to, or the others would kill him.
But they went to the stairs instead of out into the swamp.
He wouldn’t take them upstairs if he was going to kill them.
Thank God, they were going to live another day.
Amy went quickly up, but Eve took her time despite her need to reach the loo immediately. She slowly pulled herself up by the banister, taking one step at a time, well aware that the man who’d nearly pushed her up the stairs to the house had pulled himself away from the TV in the kitchen to watch.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m going as fast as I can.”
“Not that one,” Bear said sharply as Amy started for a bathroom that was near the top of the stairs. “Your using that would make it unclean. There’s another here, in the back.”
That’s why they’d come all the way upstairs. There was a small lavatory off the kitchen that the men all used. One for the men, one for the woman, and one for the infidels. Good thing there were three bathrooms in the house, or she and Amy probably would have been taken into the swamp and killed.
The thought was chilling.
Eve shuffled down the hall after Amy and the Bear. Amy had stopped short in the doorway to a room.
It was crusted with dirt, the formerly white tile dingy and gray—brown in some places. But it had a toilet, disgusting as it was.
And a window. There was a window on the far side of the tub.
“Thank you,” Eve told the Bear. She took Amy’s hand and pulled the girl inside, shutting the door behind them.
Amy was eyeing the toilet. There was no seat, no paper.
But they’d both been camping. It was hardly worse than some of the latrines they’d used. Eve went first, and after she washed up, she left the water running in the sink. Holding her finger to her lips, she looked at Amy, then stepped into the bathtub to take a closer look at the window.
It was old, with a wooden frame and a torn screen. It had been painted shut, but that paint was blistered and peeling, the wood rotting from the humidity.
Eve pushed at it gently, to see if it would open.
It gave, but just a little. With Amy’s help, she could surely haul it open, but it would make an enormous amount of noise.
And once it was opened, then what? They were on the second floor. Sprout wings and fly to the ground?
Eve wet her fingers again in the sink and rubbed at the grime in one corner of the window so she could peek outside.
The very back of the house—the kitchen—was a single-story addition to the original structure. It extended out beyond this bathroom, its roof providing a place to stand after exiting through the window. Still, that roof was pretty steep. Although there was some kind of back porch down at the end. If they could make it that far, they could use the railing to climb down and . . .
If they could make it that far.
She couldn’t even figure out a way to get the window open without everyone in the house knowing about it.
Eve climbed out of the tub, checking to make sure she’d left no footprints behind. There was a torn plastic shower curtain half hanging from a bar, and she pulled it mostly closed. That would hide the window from the Bear’s view when they opened the door.
The trip downstairs was as slow and labored as it had been going up. But finally they were back in their room. As Eve lowered herself carefully back onto the floor, the Bear didn’t bother to tie their ankles together again. No doubt he was thinking that her bad hip kept them tethered. Good.
Amy curled up, her head in Eve’s lap. She was learning to escape her hunger through sleep.
Still, just the same, Eve put her hand on the child’s forehead, checking to be sure she wasn’t running a fever.
Amy’s head was cool.
She smelled faintly of butterscotch.
Of Ralph.
Eve closed her eyes.
“We have to go back to the house. Nick’s surely waiting for us by now.” But instead of helping her to her feet, Ralph kissed her again.
They’d spread a blanket on the grass, alongside a stream, not far from the estate. They’d shared a picnic lunch, during which time Ralph had been uncommonly silent. He’d barely eaten half of his meat pie.
And when she’d asked him what was wrong, he’d pulled her into his arms and kissed her as if there were no tomorrow.
It wasn’t as if he’d never kissed her before, because over the past few weeks, he had. He kissed her good night almost every evening. He’d kissed her a time or two on the beach, when no one had been around.
But he’d never kissed her like this, never with them both lying back on a blanket, with the weight of his body partly covering hers.
Eve knew all about sex. Her mother had explained the mechanics to her when she was barely even eight. It was the day after “Uncle” Sergei had come into Eve’s bedroom, drunk and completely naked. Eve had laughed at how funny he’d looked, but her mother had been furious. It was one of the few times her anger hadn’t been an act.
It had taken her until now to learn that there were some men who had a similar power over women—and that Ralph was one of them.
She knew Ralph had a great deal of experience when it came to sex. With a face and eyes like his, he’d been—as her mother was fond of saying—not just around the block, but circling it for a while. His good looks would have probably been enough, but combined with that glib tongue . . . Ralph could talk his way into just about anything, including, as her mother also would have said, a girl’s panties.
Eve had been expecting him to try something like this weeks ago. She’d even had a speech prepared.
Except he didn’t seem to be trying much of anything. He rolled away from her, onto his back, one arm up over his eyes.
“I’m such a coward.”
Eve sat up, not sure at first just what he was talking about.
“I planned this so carefully,” he continued, “so that we’d have this time without Nick around, and then . . .”
And then she knew. He’d brought her out here, to this deserted spot to . . . Taking a deep breath, she launched into her speech. “Ralph.” A good start. “I’ve got to tell you that you, well, you may have gotten the wrong impression about me from the way I sometimes dress and talk.” She sounded breathy and childish, and she tried to lower the pitch of her voice in an attempt to sound more sophisticated. But she couldn’t do it. This was too important. She may have rehearsed this speech, but its content was something she believed completely. “The truth is, I believe with all my heart that a man and woman should be married before they . . . before . . .”
He looked up at her, his eyes wide. “Dear Lord, you didn’t think—” He sat up and started to laugh. “You did. You thought I was planning to try to . . .”
Eve felt her face turn bright red.
He reached for her and grabbed her before she could stand up and walk away, walk anywhere, walk to the stream. Walk into the stream.
“Not that I haven’t thought about it or wanted to—badly, I might add and . . . It was definitely my fault for kissing you that way. I mean, I was practically on top of you, so it makes sense that you’d think I was trying to . . . Heavenly God, save me, I’m just making this even more embarrassing, aren’t I?”
But he wasn’t. Like everything else he touched, he was making it bearable. As she glanced into his eyes, Eve felt her heart beating, so huge and heavy in her chest. And she suspected that if he truly tried to take advantage of her, she’d be unable to refuse him, as frightened as she’d be.
She loved him.
This wasn’t just some silly attraction, like the crushes her mother used to get on the young men who came to lounge around their swimming pool.
“Please know that I respect you far too much to even suggest you compromise yourself and your beliefs with me in any way,” he told her. “But I know myself well enough to be aware that what I should do often gets knocked aside in the heat of the moment. If such were the case, I’d take responsibility for my—our—actions. At least I would under normal circumstances. However.” He cleared his throat. All laughter was gone from his face. He was suddenly so serious. “My circumstances have suddenly rather drastically changed and you deserve far more than—”
“Ralph, is there any chance you could explain what you mean in American?” What was he telling her? Eve felt a stab of fear. Circumstances?
He laughed, but it sounded forced. “Am I being too English?”
“Quite, old man. Pretend you’re John Wayne.”
He laughed again. “I’m not sure I can. You see, I’m trying rather hard not to cry—I can’t imagine Mr. Wayne’s ever had that particular problem.”
Eve looked at him. Sure enough, there were tears in his eyes.
With one arm still around her, he got out his tin of butterscotch. He opened it with his thumb and held it out. “Better take one. It might sweeten the news I have to share.”
Bad news. He had bad news about his circumstances. Heart pounding, Eve took a candy, slipped it onto her tongue. She could barely taste the familiar sweet flavor.
Ralph drew in a deep breath, looked her in the eye, and forced a smile. “Eve, I’ve received a letter from my father. I’ve been called up to serve in the BEF—the British army. I’ve been assigned to an antitank division that’s bound for France. There’s no way around it. I have to report for duty in just over two weeks.”
He was leaving.
There was nothing he could have said—short of telling her that Nicky’d been killed—that would have devastated her more.
“I’ll have to go to my parents’ house about a day before that,” he continued. “To pick up my gear.”
Eve was frozen. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. Inside she was screaming. Inside, she’d thrown herself on the ground and was kicking her feet and sobbing, the way she’d done when she was four or five. Don’t leave me. Mommy, don’t leave me!
For the first time since she could remember, she’d felt safe. With Ralph around, she’d felt protected, taken care of. She’d started living again, instead of just surviving.
And now he was going to leave.
He was watching her, as if he expected her to say something. What could she possibly say?
“Well, that’s that, then.” She called up all of her mother’s acting talent to make her voice sound matter-of-fact, to make the expression and smile on her face look natural, instead of as if she were being eaten alive inside with grief and anger.
Ralph looked away, out at the water.
“Yes,” he said. “I guess that is that.” He nodded. “That’s that. Right.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll, um, I’ll spend the next few weeks—at night, of course—working out lesson plans for Nick, using those doctors’ methods. That way you can carry on with him. Keep up the progress we’ve been making. It’s just . . . my room in the boarding house is rather warm at night. I’ve found it’s nearly impossible to write—I perspire and the ink runs. If you don’t mind, I’d like to work in your library . . . ?”
“That’s fine.” Eve stood up. “Of course you may.” Suddenly they’d gone back to being strangers. How could he talk so calmly of the next few weeks when her heart was shattered?
They packed up their picnic and returned to the house.
As they walked back, he didn’t even try to hold her hand.
It might’ve ended there—and there were countless times when Eve wished that it had.
She spent the next three days numb. Ralph was there at the estate, teaching Nick, tying up all the loose ends. But other than that, he was already gone. He was polite to her again, nothing more. There were no more kisses on the beach, no kisses in the hallway as he pulled her into some shadowy alcove for a giddy, breathless, and far-too-brief moment of stolen passion.
He still stayed for dinner each evening—a gloomy affair despite his attempts to entertain Nick—but he retired to the library right after. No more walks on the beach or in the garden. No more stargazing from one of the balconies. No more late night talks of books and plays and dreams.
For several mornings in a row, Eve had found Ralph still in the library, slumped over his notes, fast asleep.
And then it happened.
Nick woke her up in the middle of the night—just past 1:30. He’d just gotten sick all over the bathroom. His head was pounding and he felt miserable.
His cheeks were bright red and he was frighteningly hot to the touch.
Eve got him cleaned up and put him back into bed, and went running for the library.
Ralph was still there. His eyes widened at the sight of her and she realized she hadn’t taken the time even to put on a robe over her cotton nightgown.
But she didn’t have to do more than utter the words scarlet fever before Ralph was
running back down the corridor with her, to Nick’s room.
One look at the boy, one touch of his head, and Ralph was heading for the telephone. Eve didn’t know what he said or who he called, but a doctor pulled into the drive within twenty minutes.
Ralph woke the Johnsons, and together they worked to bring Nicky’s fever down. It was dawn before he was sleeping, although only fitfully.
Eve was getting a blanket and pillow from her room, preparing to curl up in a chair beside Nick’s bed, when Ralph stopped her in the hallway.
The Johnsons had gone back to bed, and the doctor had departed as well, promising to return in the early afternoon.
“He’ll get through this, Eve,” Ralph told her. “Nick is going to be all right. He’s strong. He’s a fighter.”
She nodded, but she knew his words were just that—words. Back home in California, Jilly Renquist had had scarlet fever. She was strong, too. A sturdy little girl of eleven. But she’d died.
“You should probably go,” Eve said. “It’s been a long night.”
“No,” he said, “The damage is already done, so I’m going to stay here. Mrs. Johnson made up a room for me.”
Damage, what damage? He didn’t make any sense, but then again none of this did. Scarlet fever was contagious. Why was it that Nick had gotten it, but not Eve or Ralph?
“I know you want to be with him now, but I’ll come in and sit with Nick in a few hours so you can get a chance to sleep,” he continued.
She shook her head. “I’m not going to leave him.”
“Of course not. We’ll bring a cot into the room for you. You can sleep right there while I watch over Nick.”
She was too tired and too frightened to argue. She just nodded and turned toward her little brother’s room.
But Ralph stepped in front of her. “Eve, there’s something else you should know.”
Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. He was having trouble looking her in the eye.
“I realize this is probably not the best time for this, but it wouldn’t be fair for me to withhold this from you—you’ve always been honest with me, so . . .”
Yeah, sure, she’d been honest with him. He had no idea.