He chuckled, a low sound that soothed her more than it probably should have. “I heard it. That’s why I came. It sounds like one of those ferocious mobile mops.”
She laughed, too. It was a good description.
“Let’s get out of here,” Zach said, propping himself on his elbows over her. “That is, unless you’d like to stay a while and…”
Even in the darkness, she could see the gleam in his eyes. Desire surged through, amazing her with its sudden appearance and its power. But she pushed him away and got up, glancing at the condos.
“He might have called the police.”
“Right,” he replied dryly. “Thanks for reminding me. For a moment there, my brain wasn’t working too well.”
He stood up, too, and she stared at him pointedly. “Your brain is working fine. It just moved south a bit, that’s all.”
They made their way to the Jeep, stopping periodically to glance behind them in case Mary’s neighbor had called the police and they were searching the woods. But there were no sounds and no lights. If he’d called, they hadn’t arrived yet.
“We’ll try again tomorrow night,” Zach said as he started the Jeep and then eased it forward slowly over the bumpy ground toward one of the trails.
“What if she’s out of town?” C.Z. asked, thinking that Zach wasn’t the only one who wanted desperately to get on with it.
“You can call the commissioners’ offices tomorrow and find out. They might recognize my voice, but they won’t know yours.”
For the next hour, they drove through the woods, sometimes on barely identifiable trails and other times on rugged terrain where they moved at no more than a walking pace. Light snow continued to fall, and here in the woods, it had already coated the ground. This concerned Zach, because it meant they could be tracked more easily, but there was little they could do about it other than to keep moving.
C.Z. marveled aloud at his knowledge of the woods—especially given the fact that he wasn’t a native. He told her that he’d made it his business to learn what he could when he took the chief’s job.
“Besides,” he added, “I have a stack of topographical maps back there, and most of these old roads and trails are on them.”
After a while, he left a trail, and a few minutes later, they emerged at the end of a residential street filled with new homes. C.Z. had no idea where they were, but Zach explained that it was a new development at the southwest corner of town. That meant nothing to her, either, but she murmured knowledgeably. This was her hometown, but it was clear that he was the one who knew it better.
They drove for several blocks along dark, quiet streets. New construction was all around them, and the occupied houses were mostly dark. It was past midnight.
She was just beginning to figure out that the southwest corner of town wasn’t the right direction for the outdoor supply store when they left the development behind and Zach turned onto another road.
“The municipal garage?” she asked, having seen the sign.
He nodded. “With luck, we’ll be able to get some gas.”
Ahead of them was a big building, and Zach pulled quickly to one side, then jumped out, leaving the engine idling. “Wait here until I check to be sure no one’s around. If you hear anything, get out of here and into the woods, then wait for me.”
She tried not to envision herself being chased by the police as she sat there waiting for him. When he was with her, she felt safe—or as safe as two fugitives could be—but alone, as she was now, she was all too aware of her vulnerability. And she could still not quite believe that she’d gotten herself into this situation.
Zach returned just as she was beginning to think he’d been gone too long. He grinned and held up a key.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“The key to the gas pumps. It’s still kept in the same place. It wouldn’t have occurred to Colby that I’d know where it was and might use it.”
He drove the Jeep around to the pump and filled the tank, then filled the two large cans he was keeping in the back. Then he picked up the clipboard attached to the pump and wrote something before climbing into the driver’s seat.
“You told them we took gas?” she asked, thinking he’d been unable to resist taunting Colby.
He shook his head. “The garage super is supposed to check the clipboard against the pump each day. I don’t know if he actually does, but I just recorded it as being gas for the chiefs car. Unless Colby shows up to get gas tomorrow, they aren’t likely to notice.”
She smiled, appreciating the irony. “Are you keeping track of all the laws we’re breaking?”
He nodded with a grim smile. “Stealing gas is way down on the list.”
“THIS REALLY FEELS WRONG,” she said, her back to him as she scanned the lot and the highway behind it.
“Don’t worry. I’ll see that they get reimbursed for everything we take. I’d leave money now, but if I do, then Colby will know for sure that it was us.”
She turned to watch him as he applied masking tape to a portion of the glass door near the doorknob. Then he tapped the glass inside the square of tape. It shattered, but with very little sound. He reached through the hole and quickly opened the door, then pulled her inside. Four stores away was an all-night convenience store, but she was sure no one from there could have heard them.
Zach switched on a small flashlight and scanned the interior of the store, then gestured to the rear. “The clothing’s back there.”
In less than five minutes, they were outside, their arms full as they ran to the Jeep, which was parked in the shadows at the end of the strip mall. She had warm clothing, a sleeping bag, and they’d acquired a stove and more easyto-prepare foods.
Zach started the Jeep, then glanced at his watch. “Let’s go get a shower. The cleaning crew will be gone by now.”
“What? Where?” She’d been feeling grimy, but she’d been trying to ignore it.
“At the high school.”
“You’re going to break in there, too?”
“We probably won’t need to break in. Except for the big main doors, the place has lousy locks. I warned them to replace them, but my guess is that they haven’t.”
He was right, as it turned out. Gaining entry to the boiler room door required only one of her credit cards and Zach’s skill. She decided there was probably nothing more dangerous than a cop bent on a life of crime.
They hurried through silent, darkened hallways to the locker rooms. Zach pushed open the door to the boys’ locker room and then turned and bowed slightly. “If madam will follow me…”
“You know, I think you’re actually enjoying this,” she observed as they began to undress.
“I intend to enjoy this part of it, anyway,” he replied with a wicked grin. “In our situation, you take your pleasures where you can find them.”
She breathed in the familiar odor of strong disinfectant combined with the sweat of untold numbers of would-be athletes that was well-known to every former student. It felt deliciously wrong to be here with him, the kind of wrongness that served only to increase a desire that needed no help at all.
They found a bar of soap in one of the big stalls and stepped beneath the hot, stinging spray. Zach lathered his hands, then passed the soap to her, and they began to wash themselves and then each other.
Soap-slicked hands glided over sensitive skin. Small sounds of pleasure echoed off the tiled walls. And then they slid to the hard floor, their bodies entangled as they sought for a time to forget everything but the pleasure they could find with each other. The water poured over them and steam surrounded them as they found that perfect oneness and clung to it desperately, then reluctantly let it go amidst quivering aftershocks.
Zach drew her to her feet and then into his arms again as he chuckled softly. “I feel like I’ve just lived out the fantasy of every kid who ever stepped in here.”
She smiled. “Maybe boys think about that, but girls are too busy thinking about thei
r own inadequacies.”
“That couldn’t have been your problem,” he observed as his gaze swept over her.
“Oh, yes, it was. I didn’t have a waist and I didn’t have breasts. All I had were hips. It was terrible.”
“You have them now,” he replied huskily as his hands cupped her breasts, then settled into the hollows of her waist.
“I was a late bloomer. At some point, I must have decided that since I wasn’t going to have a body, I’d better have a brain.”
“Not my type at all, then,” he said, shaking his head as he reached out to turn off the water. “In those days, my brain was zipped into my pants like every other boy’s.”
They stepped out of the stall, trailing water across the floor to the row of sinks, where they turned on the hand dryers, then adjusted the nozzles and wriggled around to dry themselves.
“This isn’t working,” she said. “There might be blow dryers in the girls’ locker room.”
“Good thought.” He nodded. “I always wanted to see the inside of the girls’ locker room.”
Carrying their clothes, they walked across the polished gym floor to the other locker room, then dried themselves easily with the blow dryers. After that, they dressed quickly and left the building the way they’d entered.
The light snow had continued to fall, and it was beginning to cover the paved lot. C.Z. shivered inside her new, warmer clothing. The brief time they’d managed to carve out for themselves was already becoming a distant, cherished memory.
“THERE, SEE THEM?” Zach cried excitedly, pointing through the windshield.
C.Z. squinted into the waning light, then finally saw the footprints. “But what if it’s someone looking for us?”
“I don’t think so,” Zach said, easing the Jeep forward slowly until they were following the faint prints. “We haven’t seen any tire marks, and they aren’t likely to be on foot, but he is.”
They had spent the day crisscrossing the area where Zach believed the man known as Davy Crockett lived, and only now, with the last of the day’s dim light leaving the sky, had they found any evidence.
The temperature in the mountains was barely above freezing, so the snow had lingered, several inches deep in spots like this. And as they continued to follow the prints, more light snow began to fall—or rather, to blow around in the strong, cold wind.
“It’s going to cover his tracks,” C.Z. said with a sigh.
“Yeah, but it will cover ours, as well,” Zach reminded her. It was an impossible situation. They wanted to be able to track the man, but they feared being tracked themselves.
Then, abruptly, the prints vanished, even though the trail was still snow-covered. “He turned off,” Zach said, bringing the Jeep to a halt and staring into the woods on both sides. “Let’s see which direction he took.”
When they’d gotten out of the Jeep, they could see clearly that he’d turned left, but they lost his trail when he went into a thicket of tall pines and firs. The branches had caught most of the snow, and the ground was covered with a thick carpet of needles. It was very dark beneath the trees.
“What’s that?”
“Shh!” Zach put a finger to her lips as they listened. Then he swore and ran toward the Jeep. “Wait here!”
She hadn’t at first identified the sound, but as Zach ran to the trail, she realized it was a helicopter. They couldn’t be seen beneath the trees, but the Jeep would be clearly visible on the trail.
The distinctive whump-whump of the blades grew louder as she watched anxiously for any sign of Zach and the Jeep. C.Z. shuddered. It was bad enough to know that they were being hunted on the ground, but if they were to be tracked by air, as well…
The despair that was never far from her mind sank through her again. She didn’t understand how Zach could continue to be so optimistic, and yet she knew he was.
She thought it must be because he seemed to take every moment as it came, while she was always focused on the future, a future that held little promise for them. There were too many obstacles, too many chances that they could be wrong.
The sound of the helicopter was deafening. She moved beneath the thickest clump of trees and alternated between watching the pale, colorless sky and scanning the woods for any sign of Zach and the Jeep. Any sound of its engine would be drowned out by the helicopter.
She saw them both almost at the same time, the helicopter moving just above the trees and the Jeep weaving its way slowly into the thicket. It was impossible to guess whether the searchers had seen it.
Then, as Zach came to a stop a short distance away, the helicopter moved on, taking with it the pounding rhythm that she’d felt all through herself.
“I don’t think they saw us,” Zach said, coming toward her on foot. “If they’d seen anything at all suspicious, they’d have been back for a second look.”
She thought—hoped—that made sense. “But what about our tracks? Couldn’t they have seen them?”
“It’s a light snow and it’s blowing around a lot. From up there, their vision would be more obscured.”
They waited in silence until the sound of the helicopter faded completely. Then they got into the Jeep and made their way to the trail. Zach stopped and studied their surroundings, then got out of the Jeep. She watched curiously as he took a small hatchet from the back and strode to a thick-trunked oak. He hacked at the tree until he had carved out a wedge-shaped piece of wood at shoulder height. Then he came back.
“That’ll mark the spot where he left the trail,” he explained. “So we can find it again tomorrow. I think he’s probably somewhere close by. It isn’t the kind of day when he’d be roaming too far. And I want to have another look at those maps. It’s likely that he’s built his cabin near a stream, so I want to see if there’s one close by here.”
She listened to his quiet determination and his certainty and marveled anew. How could he be so sure that even if they did find this recluse, it would make any difference?
“In the meantime,” Zach said, seemingly oblivious to her uncertainties, “we’ve got some traveling to do. We can camp in the woods behind Mary’s condo.”
She nodded, feeling a tiny blossoming of hope at the thought of Mary Williams. She’d called the commissioners’ office this morning and was told that Mary was in a meeting. So they knew she wasn’t out of town.
“SHE MUST BE HOME,” Zach said as they crouched at the edge of the woods, staring at a lighted window on the second floor of Mary Williams’s condo. It was just past ten o’clock. C.Z. hoped Mary wasn’t going to bed already.
Then, as if in answer to her unspoken question, Mary appeared at the window, staring into the darkness. She was fully dressed, and she stood there for what seemed an abnormal length of time, given the fact that she couldn’t really be seeing anything. Then she moved away, and a moment later, the light went out. Zach put words to her thoughts before C.Z. could do it.
“I think she’s guessed that you tried to contact her and might be trying again. The neighbor must have told her that he thought someone was here last night.”
C.Z. hoped he was right. But she didn’t tell Zach the other thought she had, that Mary might be trying to help her but really knew nothing.
Zach gave her a quick kiss. “You’re sure you can find your way back to the campsite?”
She nodded, even though she really wasn’t sure at all. He’d given her a tiny but powerful flashlight, and it wasn’t really far, but she knew the woods would seem very different without him at her side. He planned to use the time she’d be with Mary to get more gas.
He slipped into the darkness and she waited a moment, then emerged into the grassy area behind the condos. When she reached the gate, she remembered the yappy little dog and hesitated, peering over the gate into the yards. The outside lights at Mary’s neighbor’s were off, so she assumed the dog was inside. She opened the gate and hurried to Mary’s patio. No lights were on there, either, but she could see a faint light through the kitchen win
dows—and then, just as she started across the patio, she saw a shadowy figure behind the glass doors.
“C.Z.! Hurry, before they decide to let Caesar out again.” Mary’s voice was a low, urgent whisper as she slid open the door and beckoned to C.Z. “I knew it must have been you last night.”
Words failed C.Z. as she stepped through the door and into Mary’s warm embrace. She realized that she had fallen into the mind-set of a fugitive, believing that she and Zach were alone against the world. Mary’s simple, unhesitating acceptance meant far more to her than any words could have conveyed.
“When my neighbors told me that they thought someone had been out there last night, I felt certain it must be you. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. I spent the night with an old friend. It was the first anniversary of her husband’s death and she didn’t want to be alone.”
She led C.Z. into the living room, talking all the while about her friend, a woman C.Z. vaguely remembered as a former neighbor. Then Mary made a dismissive gesture.
“Listen to me, going on like this. Are you hungry? I can fix you something.”
“Coffee would be fine, if you have some,” C.Z. replied in a surprisingly husky tone. She felt as though she was about to burst into tears—all the tears she’d been holding back because she didn’t want Zach to blame himself for having dragged her into his problem.
Mary left her in the gracious living room and went to fix the coffee. C.Z. swiped at her eyes and looked around her. How pleasant it was to be in a home again, to feel the security of walls around her and thick carpeting beneath her feet and comforting warmth. She took off her stolen jacket guiltily, hoping that Mary wouldn’t know where it had come from.
“The coffee will be ready in a few minutes,” Mary announced. “And you can help me eat some of the sticky buns Emily baked and insisted I bring home. They were her husband’s favorite.”
She perched on the edge of a lovely wing chair and studied C.Z. unabashedly. “You look well, in spite of it all,” she pronounced.
“I’m fine,” C.Z. assured her, though she knew she wasn’t. “We’ve been living in the woods, but we have everything we need.”
Runaway Heart Page 18
