by Harper Allen
Chapter Sixteen
“You’re out of your mind.” Scudder fumbled at his belt for his gun. Clumsily he drew it out and pointed it at her. “Skinwalker’s a legend, dammit—a bogeyman. He doesn’t exist.”
“That’s what you’ve been telling yourself,” Susannah said thinly. “And maybe he made it easy for you to tell yourself that. Did he come to you in the darkness one night when you were standing guard at the Double B gate? Was he just a voice over the telephone, offering to help you in return for you getting him what he wanted?”
“I’ve heard enough, goddammit,” Scudder said thickly. “Whether I made a deal with someone or not, I don’t want to hear any more of this Skinwalker business. Get over to that bedroll, lady, or I’ll—”
“He’s not getting my son, Scudder!”
Even as his hand clamped around her wrist, Susannah launched herself at him. For a second he was taken off guard. In the wavering light of the lantern she saw his face contort into a mask of hate, saw him bring the gun up, saw his finger tighten on the trigger.
And although in the days to come she persuaded herself it had been her imagination, for a moment she was sure she saw two hideously elongated shadows on the cavern wall grappling with her, where there should have been only Scudder’s.
Her arm came up at the same second that he pulled the trigger. His shot went wide.
“You little bitch,” he grunted. “I like ’em feisty but you’re just—”
Abruptly he broke off. Susannah saw his eyes narrow as he recognized the sound she’d already heard and identified.
From somewhere in the deeper reaches of the cavern came an ominous rumbling. Overlying it was a second sound—a high-pitched squeaking that seemed to be gathering rapidly toward them from every direction.
She was a country girl, Susannah thought in weary satisfaction. She’d known the bats would come flooding out first, and in a cavern this size there would be thousands of them. Even if Scudder started running now they would impede his progress enough that the approaching rockfall would overtake him long before he got to safety.
And God willing, Danny would be safe in his enclosure of boulders until the search parties reached him.
“You’re about as dumb as butter, Mr. Jasper Scudder,” she said softly. “You once working the mines and all, a body would think you’d know better’n to go firing off a gun in a place like this. While you’re running, you might want to remember some names to keep your mind off how you’re going to die. Names like Frank Barrett’s.”
The rumbling was getting louder. Scudder looked wildly down the yawning mouth of the cavern and then back toward the way they’d come in.
“You’re going to die, too,” he snarled. He crammed the miner’s hat on his head. “Don’t you get it, you crazy bitch? You’re going to die, too!”
“Nick Stephanopoulos,” Susannah said, but already Scudder had whirled desperately around and was heading for the narrow passageway. She saw the light on his hard hat bobbing eerily for a few feet, and then it disappeared as he turned the corner.
A sudden shower of rock chips rained down on her. The high-pitched squeaking rose in volume. Calmly Susannah walked over to the lantern and blew it out. In the darkness she felt her way to the tight triangle of boulders and curled up beside them, content to be this close to her son even if she couldn’t reach through to touch him.
“Lacey and Jessica Bird,” she whispered, ending the list of Scudder’s victims. “Granny? Mama? You keep watch over my little boy, you hear me? There’ll be folks come looking for us pretty soon. You lead them to him.”
Suddenly the velvet blackness was filled with the sound of rushing wings and twittering calls, hundreds upon hundreds of them, speeding toward safety. They were God’s creatures, she thought, and like all He’d created they’d been given their own gifts. They knew she was there and as long as she stayed still they wouldn’t fly into her.
She should say a prayer, she supposed. But maybe He would understand if her last thoughts were of a fallen angel, and the brief slice of heaven she’d known on this earth.
“I love you, Tye,” she whispered. The rumbling got louder, and now the very earth around her was shaking. The crashing filled her ears and all around her the cavern’s roof began falling as the last of the bats streamed past. She closed her eyes and saw a tanned face, eyes as blue as the sky smiling down at her. “I’ll always love—”
“Susannah!”
Her eyes flew open in shock. Light flooded the cavern—light from the electric lantern Tye was holding in one hand.
“Tye!”
She had to be in heaven already, she told herself faintly. But heaven was supposed to have pearly gates and music and—
“Suze, thank God!” He raced to her and pulled her to her feet. “Where’s Danny?” Raw fear sharpened his already edged tone.
“He—he’s here, Tye.” Dazedly she began to lift the carry-cot from the enclosing shield of boulders, but he stopped her.
“Just pick him up and let’s go, Suze.” Another piece of the ceiling crashed down a few feet away. “There’s a second passageway out of here. If we hurry we’ve got a—”
The ground shuddered underfoot, and to Susannah’s horror she saw the very walls around them start to buckle. Even as she reached for Danny, Tye scooped him up, his face grim.
“This way, Suze. Hurry!”
Forever after, she found it hard to recall much at all of that hellish race through the bowels of the earth. But Tye seemed to know each twist and turn of the corridor as if he’d explored every inch of it dozens of times in the past, and at some point, the dank mushroom smell that had permeated her nostrils since Scudder had forced her to enter the cavern began to mingle with another, achingly familiar scent.
That scent was fresh air, Susannah realized. And the light around them was no longer coming from the lantern, but from sunshine shafting through an opening just ahead. Tears blurred her vision as she clambered up onto solid ground before reaching back to take Danny from Tye’s uplifted arms.
She chafed at the tiny hands. Danny opened his eyes sleepily. He blinked against the sunlight and scowled.
“Is he all right, Suze?” Tye was beside her, his face drawn. She nodded, unable at first to speak.
“He—he seems just fine, Tye.” She turned tear-washed eyes to his. “How did you find us? How did you even know where to look?”
He pushed a strand of hair back from her temple. Instead of answering her question, he let his hand continue moving to the back of her neck. It settled there. She felt his fingers gently gather in a palmful of her hair.
“Just let me look at you for a moment, honey.” His voice was uneven. “I was so afraid I’d—” A muscle moved visibly at the side of his jaw. “Oh, Suze, I was so damned afraid I was going to be too late,” he whispered.
“Tye.” Wonderingly she touched a wind-burnished cheekbone. A single silvery track ran down it. “Tye, you—you’re crying.”
“You and Danny.” His smile was tight. “You’re my everything. My everything, Suze, do you understand? And I came so close to losing you.”
He looked away for a second, and took a deep breath. Then he looked back at her. “Your father’s alive, Susannah.”
Tremulously she nodded. “I know. Scudder—” Just saying the name brought nausea to her throat. “Scudder told me. He told me everything.”
Even as the words passed her lips doubt assailed her. What exactly had Scudder said in those final few minutes—or more importantly, what had he actually admitted to? Suddenly she felt as if she was awakening from a nine-month-long bad dream, a bad dream that had culminated in that feverish and already jumbled confrontation between her and the man who’d hunted her down.
The accusations she’d leveled at him near the end had been part of that fantastical and twisted confrontation in the shadows, Susannah thought slowly. Under a sunlit sky they seemed ridiculously far-fetched. Scudder had been more than evil enough to have masterminded
his own cruel schemes without the help of a bogeyman that didn’t—couldn’t—exist.
“Then the FBI are going to need to talk to you, honey, because Jasper himself isn’t going to be available for questioning.” Tye squinted across the canyon. “See that?”
She looked in the direction he’d indicated. Except for an agitated flock of birds darting around in the air, there was nothing of note there as far as she could tell.
“See what?” she asked, confused.
“That’s just it. There’s nothing there to see,” he said quietly. “Scudder’s truck is behind that outcrop of rock higher up. There should be an entranceway to the cavern there, but it’s gone.”
They weren’t birds, they were bats, she realized belatedly. They’d made it out. Jasper Scudder hadn’t. Right now all she could manage to feel at that knowledge was overwhelming relief.
“Daniel phoned Del just after you left.” Tye grimaced wryly. “Very long story, honey, and you’ll hear it all when we get back to the ranch. But when we realized Johnson was Scudder and he had you and Danny, Connor asked your father if there was anything he could tell us about the man that might give us a clue as to where he’d taken you. Daniel said something about Scudder having worked in a mine at one time. I thought there was an outside chance he might have come here, and when I found his truck I knew I’d guessed right. Then I felt the cave-in begin.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again Susannah saw raw pain sheening his gaze.
“Del had always forbidden us to explore these caverns, so naturally I got to know them like the back of my hand.” He shook his head. “I died a thousand deaths on my way in, honey. If I hadn’t found you and Danny when I did I’d still be in there searching for you.”
“You keep saving me, Tye,” she said softly.
He shook his head. “No, Suze. You saved me. That’s why I don’t want you to come out to California and live with me.”
She stared at him. A body didn’t have to be in a cavern to be shut off from all light, all warmth, she realized shakily. It wasn’t necessary to be caught in a cave-in to feel suddenly as if the very ground beneath your feet was about to give way.
“You don’t?” Her throat closed on the question.
“I don’t.” He held her gaze. “I want you right here with me in New Mexico, honey. I’m going to be running the Double B with Del from now on.” Brief uncertainty shadowed his features. “Do you think you’d like being a rancher’s wife, Suze?”
“I think I’d love being a rancher’s wife, Tye,” she whispered, pure joy spreading through her. Answering joy turned the indigo gaze holding hers to a blue that looked as if it had been stolen from heaven. Tye brought his mouth to hers in a kiss that was almost a vow.
“You, me and Dan the Man, Suze,” he said finally, lifting his head. A corner of his mouth quirked upward as he took her son from her and pulled her to her feet. “A Harley isn’t the most practical choice of transportation for the three of us. Do you think my bad-boy biker days are over?”
“I think your biker days are over,” she said promptly. “Danny’s new daddy’s going to be lookin’ for a minivan, Tye.” She raised herself on her tiptoes and planted a kiss square on his mouth. “But it wouldn’t be the Double B if there wasn’t a little bit of bad in its boys.”
Lovingly Susannah gazed at the big man holding the tiny baby, and felt her heart overflow.
“Let’s go home now, Tye,” she said softly. “Let’s go home to the Double B.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3750-6
LONE RIDER BODYGUARD
Copyright © 2004 by Sandra Hill
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* The Avengers
† Men of the Double B Ranch
