At the top of the mountain, she reached the intersection with the road that led to the A-frame. For a moment, she considered going straight, away from the A-frame. But then she turned left, toward it, deciding that if the car followed her, she could always drive past the entrance.
Her brief hesitation brought the other vehicle closer, and she saw it turning in the same direction. She was frightened, thinking about the lengthy stretch of deserted road that lay ahead. What if she was being followed and the driver tried to ram her or force her off the road? She gripped the wheel more tightly. Beads of perspiration popped out on her brow. At any moment, she expected the vehicle to speed toward her in a blaze of bright headlights. But it stayed where it was, vanishing from view as she rounded curves, then reappearing the same distance away on the straight stretches.
She slowed down, knowing that she risked a confrontation but unable to stand the uncertainty any longer. The turnoff to the A-frame was only a few miles ahead.
For a brief moment, the headlights seemed to come closer, but then the vehicle slowed and turned onto a gravel road she’d noticed and assumed led to some cabins. C.Z. came to a stop in the middle of the road and watched as the headlights lit up the woods briefly, then vanished as the car moved deeper into the woods.
Breathing a noisy sigh of relief, C.Z. set off again, driving fast and not slowing until she reached the turnoff to the A-frame. And as she turned, she dismissed the other vehicle and concentrated instead on Zach and what she should tell him.
When she reached the first cabin, she slowed to a stop, trying to decide if she should put her car in the garage and proceed on foot. But she couldn’t stay. She would have to return to Stacey’s before dawn. So she drove on, still undecided about how to handle the situation.
The A-frame was dark. The old Jeep was nowhere in evidence, but she assumed it must be parked around back. By now, it was past the bar closing time, so Zach must be here, probably watching uneasily from the darkened windows until he recognized her car. Or perhaps he’d already guessed she would be coming. He knew she’d seen him.
She turned off the engine and got out, then waited a moment for her eyes to adjust as much as possible to the darkness. A chill wind blew around her. It seemed much colder than it had only a short time ago when she’d come out of Stacey’s house. She didn’t need a sense of direction to know that it was coming out of the north, bringing the first real hint of the winter to come.
“Zach, it’s me!” she called as she started up the steps to the deck, wondering if he might already be asleep. If so, he’d apparently been able to slough off the events of earlier this evening much better than she had. Perhaps she’d been mistaken about his reaction.
She peered in through the glass, but could see nothing, not even the glow of a fire in the fireplace. C.Z. pounded on the door, and called his name again. But no light came on inside, and in the utter stillness of the night, she could hear no movements in there.
Terrified that something had happened to him, C.Z. hurried down the steps and around the side of the little house. The Jeep was gone! She stood there for a moment, willing it to appear as she searched her mind frantically for an explanation that would leave him safe.
And she thought about how little she really knew him, how foolish she’d been to declare her love for a man who was still, in so many ways, a stranger to her. Moments in her office at the prison and hours spent in complete isolation with him here did not add up to knowledge. To truly know someone, you had to see them in the context of their normal life—and nothing about their lives had been normal.
She retraced her steps to the front of the A-frame, then belatedly tried the front door. It was locked. There was nothing for her to do but to return to Stacey’s, then come out later, during the day. Should she tell him she’d been here tonight? Now there was yet another decision to make, when she hadn’t even decided what to tell him about the reason for her being with Sam.
Instead of going to her car, she sank down on the steps. The cold wind whipped her, finding its way through her sweater. She ignored it. It was certainly no worse than the chill inside her at the moment.
Some part of her began to back away, to peer with cold objectivity at this woman who sat in front of an empty cabin contemplating a man she didn’t really know but thought she loved. And this objective being was not pleased.
“C.Z., it’s me!”
The disembodied voice broke through her unhappy thoughts, causing her to leap up and stare into the darkness, uncertain where it had come from—uncertain if in fact she’d even heard it.
Shadows moved amidst deeper shadows, and then he emerged, walking calmly toward her. The disguise was gone. Except for the gray beard she hadn’t gotten used to, it was Zach.
“Where were you?” she asked as he came to a stop a few feet away, her voice harsher than she’d intended.
“I saw the headlights and decided to get the Jeep into the woods, even though I guessed it might be you.”
Now she saw the gun—her father’s gun—stuck in his waistband, and she wondered why he had it if he’d thought it was her. If it had been the police, would he have used it? She wanted to think he’d never do such a thing, but she wasn’t sure.
“Why would you think it was me?” she demanded, unable to let go of her anger even though a part of her wanted to fling herself into his arms.
He stared at her in silence for a moment. “I thought you might come out here with an explanation.”
Try as hard as she could, she could not determine his mood from the tone of his voice. If he disliked her talking and behaving like a psychologist, she hated even more his cop’s voice.
She was just beginning to formulate a response when she heard something. He apparently did, too, because his head swiveled sharply toward the road as he held up a hand to silence her.
And then they both heard it clearly, the sound of an engine, growing steadily louder. Her heart leaped into her throat The car that had been following her!
Zach grabbed her arm and began to run, half dragging her along with him as they fled into the woods. Behind them, the sound of the approaching vehicle filled the silence.
She started to say something, to explain about the car that had followed her, but he hushed her as he continued to pull her deeper into the woods. She didn’t see the Jeep until they were nearly upon it.
He reached inside and grabbed something, then started off again. She followed him, even though she guessed that he’d intended for her to wait there. By the time he stopped at the crest of a hill, she could see that he was carrying what looked like a pair of bulky binoculars.
He motioned for her to get down, and they both crawled to the edge of the hilltop. He propped his elbows on the hard ground and peered through the binoculars, which she realized must be the infrared type that were used for night vision by the military. She’d heard about them somewhere, though she’d never seen them, and she wondered where he’d gotten them. They must have been in the duffel bag he’d filled at his house that time.
He swore softly, then lowered them. “It’s not the police,” he told her in a cold, dead voice. “It must be Summers’s men.”
“It’s my fault, Zach,” she said in a choked voice, then told him about the car that had followed her, then turned off.
He picked up the glasses again but said nothing. She stared into the darkness, then flinched involuntarily as a bright beam of light began to sweep the area below them. Until the light illuminated the A-frame, she hadn’t realized they were directly above it.
Zach lowered the glasses, and they both watched in silence as the bright beam continued to sweep the area around the A-frame. In the silence, she could hear the faint sounds of voices, two of them, she thought.
“Not too damned smart,” Zach muttered, seemingly more to himself than to her. “You’d think they were out spotting deer instead of looking for an armed and dangerous man.”
The lights swung around again, briefly illuminating he
r car. C.Z. let out a soft sound of surprise. “My car! They’ll know—”
“Unfortunately.”
She edged away from him, thoroughly ashamed of her great foolishness. Not only had she led them to Zach, but she’d tipped her own hand, as well.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, knowing how inadequate the words were.
He groped for her hand and found it, then squeezed it briefly before focusing once again on the scene below them. “It could just as easily have been the police. One of my deputies came into the bar tonight, and I caught him looking at me one too many times.”
“But you must have made certain that no one followed you here,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but he was definitely suspicious, and all he had to do to find out where I live was to talk to the ones who were out here that time. I was already trying to figure out how to get word to you that I’d have to move on.”
“Move on where?”
“I don’t know.”
The spotlight was abruptly extinguished. She thought she could see a faint glow, but she couldn’t tell what it was. “What are they doing now?” she asked as he continued to watch them through the night-vision glasses.
“I think they have a phone in the car and they’re using it—probably calling Summers.”
“Or the police,” she suggested grimly.
“No, they won’t do that unless Summers tells them to.”
“Will he?”
“He might. He could say that he hired people to look for me because he was worried that I would go after him. It would sound legitimate enough, and with Colby in his pocket, he could get away with it.
“On the other hand, he might want to find me himself. It’d be easier for him or one of his goons to kill me than for the police to do it. But your being here could complicate things for him.”
No, she thought, Summers now wants to get rid of me, as well. But this wasn’t the time or the place to explain her actions. She’d done enough damage for one day.
“They’re breaking in,” Zach said as he continued to watch the scene far below. Then he rolled over and sat up. “Time to get going. We won’t be going back there.”
“But if they leave—”
“They won’t—not until reinforcements come. Summers will have told them to stay.”
“Where are we going?”
Zach stood up and looked at her. He was nothing more than a big, dark shadow. “Into the woods.”
THE SLEEP that had eluded her and gotten them into this mess still wouldn’t come. She had made herself as comfortable as possible on the hard seat and closed her eyes. But instead of slipping into unconsciousness, she kept seeing them as though from a great height: two tiny people in their little Jeep, lost in an unending wilderness of deep green and scattered golds and reds and bare branches awaiting snow.
The night was cold. Not just chilly as previous nights had been, but truly cold. Zach was dressed more warmly than she was, but he had removed his jacket and turned on the heat to keep her warm. Fortunately, the battered old Jeep had a good heater.
Only now was the knowledge of her situation becoming clear to her. A casual decision not to hide her car in the neighboring cabin’s garage had resulted in all her bridges having been burned. Or perhaps not. Whoever had followed her might have found it anyway, hidden or not. At the very least, Summers must have suspected her involvement with Zach or he wouldn’t have had her followed.
Or maybe he hadn’t really suspected that but had had her followed with the hope of finding a way to kill her before she caused him any more trouble.
She couldn’t believe that she was sitting here, bumping along trails through an endless woods, thinking about all the reasons someone wanted to kill her.
She gave up trying to sleep and cast a sidelong glance at Zach as he concentrated on driving. In the dim light from the dashboard, his gray beard gleamed with silver high-lights. It was strange how she persisted in seeing him without the beard when she should have grown used to it by now.
She wondered how much of the uncertainties about him that seemed to lie just beneath the surface could be attributed to that. He wasn’t just one man. Instead, he was three—the Zach she had first met, the bigger, older, gray-haired artist—and the man she saw now. They were only superficial differences, of course, but still…
Apparently sensing that she was awake and watching him, Zach turned briefly to her. “Tell me about it,” he said in a neutral tone.
“Tell you about what?” she asked, startled.
“Whatever it was that you did.”
“How do you know I did anything?” She was amazed.
“If Summers had someone keeping a twenty-four-hour watch on you, you must have done something. We’ve stayed apart long enough that he shouldn’t have been suspicious of you now.”
“You know, you’re the kind of cop who must be every criminal’s nightmare,” she replied, stalling for time as she tried to decide what to tell him.
“That’s exactly what I aim to be. I thought we’d agreed that you wouldn’t do anything without talking to me first.”
“But we weren’t getting anywhere, Zach. You know that. How many days did you think you could spend searching the woods for the truck and then hanging out in bars at night, hoping to hear something useful?”
“As many days and nights as it took. I’m a patient guy.”
She snorted derisively. “Patience doesn’t strike me as being one of your virtues.”
“Then you don’t know me very well. When I was with the NYPD, I had a reputation for patience and persistence. Remember those scenes in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where that posse kept following them no matter where they went? Butch or Sundance would always be saying, ‘Who are those guys?’ Well, I’m that guy.”
“I love that movie,” she said. “It’s one of my favorites.”
“Mine, too. Now tell me what you did.”
She told him. Lying seemed pointless, since he already knew she’d done something. And then, after she’d recounted her conversations with Colby and with Summers, she told him about Sam.
“That’s why I had dinner with him—to tell him what I’d done. I thought maybe he could help. But I didn’t tell him about you, of course.” When Zach said nothing, she hurried on. “You see, I thought it was something I could do without involving you.”
“Right. You’d just set yourself up to get killed, but you’d keep me out of it.” He smacked the steering wheel. “Dammit, C.Z. You let that glad-handing bastard convince you that he’s harmless, even though you believe he killed your father and tried to frame me, not to mention killing those kids.”
There was just enough truth to what he said to make her ashamed and defensive. “I was trying to help,” she insisted, knowing it was a poor excuse. “And Sam is going to help, too,” she added. “He guessed right away that Summers was worried you would sooner or later find out that he was the driver of that pickup. So he plans to go to the police and say he’s representing me and get the file on the school bus crash.”
“So now he’s in danger, too,” Zach said disgustedly.
“Maybe he won’t do it now. I was supposed to go to his office this morning to give him a retainer and make it official that I’ve hired him to look into it.”
“Except now you can’t go to his office. And what do you suppose he’s going to do when he discovers that you’ve disappeared?”
She hadn’t gotten far enough to think of that. “He’ll probably do it anyway.”
“That and more,” Zach said ominously. “At the very least, he’ll let Colby know that you’ve talked to him, which will make it more difficult for either Summers’s goons or Colby’s men to kill you—maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe? First of all, they can’t even find us, and—”
“I’m not the only one who knows these woods,” he reminded her. “And if they find us out here, it would be pretty easy for them to cook up some scenario where I kidnapped you, t
hen killed you in a shoot-out with them.”
“Sam would never believe that,” she replied, trying not to think about the chilling scene he’d conjured up.
“Then they’ll just find a way to get rid of Sam and make it look like an accident. You don’t understand the mentality here. You could argue that the school bus accident wasn’t murder, which is what they must have told themselves. Running away was cowardly, but what the hell. They were drunk at the time and not thinking clearly. But when they killed your father, they were both set on a course that makes it easier to kill again—and again. After all, what have they got to lose now?”
C.Z. shuddered. “I remember Dad telling me about how some people take one small step into crime and then can’t get out. Of course, the school bus wasn’t a small step, but it wasn’t intentional, either.”
“Yeah. It’s Shakespeare’s tragic flaw theory.”
She threw him a startled look and he shrugged. “You know the killer instinct is in most people—we all have a little of Macbeth in us—but fortunately nothing ever happens to trigger it. For some people, though, something happens, and then it’s all downhill.” She surprised herself by laughing. “I can’t believe that we’re here, in the middle of nowhere, running for our lives—and we’re talking about Shakespeare.”
He chuckled. “It beats talking about how we’re going to get out of this.”
“HOW ARE WE going to get out of this?” she asked as she peered through the rain-blurred windows. It seemed to her that she could see some snowflakes mixed in with the rain. She had wrapped Zach’s sleeping bag around her, but she shivered anyway.
She had discovered Zach had prepared for the possibility he would have to flee into the woods. Stored in the Jeep were the sleeping bag, a small tent, food and extra gas, and he’d kept the Jeep’s gas tank filled. It made her feel somewhat better that he’d expected this to happen, but she still blamed herself.
Exhaustion had finally overcome the discomfort of the Jeep’s hard seat, and she’d slept for several hours. She assumed he had, as well, because when she awoke, she discovered that he’d pulled off the trail and parked next to a small, swift-running stream.
Runaway Heart Page 16
