by Theresa Weir
Where was she supposed to go?
She asked the question, disgusted with herself for the obvious terror she failed to keep from her voice.
“Away... from ... this fucking Siberia.” His words were broken, forced out through frozen lips. “Turn up the heat and head to your house.”
Her house? Had he said her house? Why? She would have thought he’d want a ride to some buddy’s place, or maybe some private airstrip. Her house hadn’t even entered the realm of possibilities.
Okay. She got it now. This was something devised by Libby. Once they reached Claire’s, the guy in the backseat would whip out his boom box and start stripping.
She relaxed a little. She may have even smiled slightly. “We don’t need to go all the way to my place,” she said over her shoulder. “Nothing personal, but I don’t really want to see you take off your clothes. So let’s just forget it. When Libby asks me about it, I’ll tell her you were great.”
“What the hell are you babbling about?”
“Libby hired you, right?”
“You’re hurting my head. Just shut up and drive.”
She tensed again. Libby hadn’t hired him. This was real.
She couldn’t take him to her house. Her house was too secluded, too remote. And she didn’t have a phone. It wasn’t that she was into the suffering artist thing. Even if she could afford a phone, she wouldn’t have one. Born too soon or too late, she wanted to see a person’s face when she spoke with him or her. Half of a conversation was facial expressions.
She could go to Libby’s—but no, the last thing she wanted to do was expose her friend to danger. Forgive me, Libby. That wall with the jagged glass doesn't seem nearly so wacko now.
The station? What about the police station?
It wouldn’t take a genius to catch on if she pulled up in front of a building that had a couple of patrol cars out front, and bars on the windows. She didn’t want to do anything to set him off.
Maybe her house wasn’t such a bad idea. She would have the advantage since she knew the layout. It could be like Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark.
She felt faint. Dizzy.
Hot air blasted her in the face. She turned down the temperature gauge.
“Turn that up. I’m freezing my ass off back here.”
She turned it back up, sweat trickling down her spine, under her layers upon layers of winter clothing.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said thickly. “I just want a place to get warm. Get some dry clothes. A place to...” His words trailed off, as if he were having trouble concentrating. “Think. A place ... to ... think.”
She felt a pang of sympathy, a feeling she pushed to the back of her mind.
His exhaustion was obvious. If she took him to her house, maybe he would fall asleep. If that happened, she could get away. She could go for help.
“My husband’s home,” she said, trying one last time to change his mind.
“Shut up and drive.”
The tone of his voice told her that he was tired of her chatter.
And so she drove.
In the direction of her house.
She’d read somewhere that kidnappers thought of their victims as non-people, and as soon as they began to think of them as people, things changed. There was much less chance of their harming you.
“What’s your name?” she asked over her shoulder, cringing, hoping he didn’t consider her question too personal.
He didn’t respond right away.
“Dylan,” he finally said.
It had taken too long to come up with that answer.
“Mine’s Claire.”
“Claire.” There was hesitation as he seemed to give that some thought. “Is that a hillbilly name?”
In his book, was hillbilly good or bad? "I don’t know,” she said, playing it safe.
"I’ve heard about you mountain people. You marry your cousins and brothers and shit like that.”
"I think you’ve watched a few too many daytime talk shows,” she said, anger beginning to edge away her terror.
"You know what I think?” he asked. "I think you made up that stuff about a husband.” He sniffed the air. "You have that mothball smell about you that says you live alone.”
A mothball smell! How could she smell like mothballs?
But then she remembered that before meeting Libby at the tavern, she’d been to the nursing to talk with the administrator about the art classes she was going to teach. Had some of that old smell rubbed off on her?
“Do you gargle with Listerine and drink castor oil?” he asked.
How old did he think she was?
"What’s your last name? Clampett?” He kind of laughed a little to himself, as if getting a kick out of his own joke.
"Maxfield,” she said. People often accused her of making it up, deliberately naming herself after Maxfield Parrish, the American painter, or Peter Max, but Maxfield was the name on her birth certificate.
“What did you do?” she asked, still attempting to get him to open up.
“Do?” he asked reflectively. “I was born.”
“I mean, what are you running from?”
“Maybe I’m just running from myself.”
She ignored his evasive answer. “There’s nowhere you can go. Nowhere you can hide. Why don’t I drive you to the police station? They’ll be easier on you if you turn yourself in.”
“You’re the one who’s been watching too much TV.”
Twenty miles.
That’s how far it was from Fallon to Claire’s house. Maybe it would give her time to come up with a plan.
Behind her he’d fallen silent. Five minutes later there was still no sound from the backseat. Was he asleep?
She gradually slowed the Jeep. When the speedometer dropped to thirty, she reached for the door handle. She would jump. She would jump and she would land in a snowdrift and she would be okay.
Behind her, he stirred.
She let go of the door handle and pressed a booted foot back down on the accelerator.
Ten minutes later, she pulled up in front of the two-story log home she rented during the off-season. The automatic yard light came on, illuminating a path to the door. Under normal conditions, she would have been glad to be home. Now she was afraid she’d driven herself into a trap. Claire cut the engine and pocketed the keys, grabbed her purse and slipped from the Jeep.
The man was right behind her.
He tumbled out the door, sprawling at her feet.
She let out a surprised, sympathetic sound. Her reaction was automatic. A human in trouble. She reached for him.
He growled low in his throat and jerked away. “Leave me alone.” Without assistance, he lurched to his feet, then stood there swaying, getting his bearings as he looked in the direction of the house.
Suddenly Claire’s dog, Hallie, decided it was time to punch in. She erupted from her fiberglass igloo, barking frantically.
Dylan—if that really was his name, and Claire sincerely doubted it—let out an alarmed shout. With gun in hand, he swung to face the dog.
The gun wobbled.
Claire threw herself on Hallie, hugging the shepherd to her. “Don’t hurt her!” Hallie may have come out barking, but it was all a front. She was one of the biggest cowards of the dog world.
“For chrissake, lady.” There was blatant irritation in the man’s voice. “I’m not going to hurt your dog.”
Relieved, Claire let go of the dog and got to her feet.
“You leave your dog outside in this Siberia?”
“She’s used to it,” Claire said defensively. “She'd get too hot inside. I let her inside sometimes. If it's really cold.” She couldn't believe he was chastising her over the care of her dog.
“Quit blathering and open the door.”
He was hugging himself, shaking.
Claire unlocked the door, her mind racing. She stepped back, hoping he would go first and she could make a run for it. Instead, she felt h
is hand on her back, pushing her ahead of him. She felt for the wall switch, muted light from a forty-watt bulb cast shadows about the room.
She dropped her purse on the kitchen table and turned to get her first good look at her captor.
Everything hit her at once. The cut and bruise on his forehead; the dark, intense gaze; the broad, unshaven jaw; the sensual mouth, with softly curving lips.
“My God,” she said.
Claire had an eye for detail. After all, she was an artist. Maybe. Unfortunately the verdict was still out on that. But if she were to witness a robbery, she'd be able to tell the police what the thief looked like from the top of his head to the color of his shoelaces. She didn't try to figure out why a person would, say, wear a golf cap with a suit, she simply observed the phenomenon.
It wasn't light enough in the room to distinguish the color of the man's eyes, but they were looking at her with an unwavering directness that she found disconcerting. The cut across his forehead had bled, then dried. He may have tried to clean his face at some time or another, but hadn't had much success. His jacket was torn, white feathers oozing out the rips. Some of the squares were flat and empty. His jeans were stained with what looked like blood—from his head?—and some kind of black soot, as if he'd stood too near a fire.
He was younger than she'd thought. Not over thirty, she'd guess.
He swayed, spotting the couch. He stumbled forward, falling into it, onto it, letting out a gasp of pain as he went down.
He just sat there awhile, apparently waiting for everything to stabilize, waiting for the sharp edges of his pain to dull.
Light from the kitchen fell on his face, accentuating the contrast of elegant bone structure. His hair was short and dark and straight. It was the kind of hair that had a mind of its own, that had a tendency to stick up around a cowlick. He had two: One on top of his head, and one in front, above his right eye. Near that right eye was a small, half-moon scar.
“The Jeep keys,” he mumbled, holding out his hand. “Give 'em to me.”
Claire fished them out of her pocket and dropped them into his outstretched palm.
Long fingers curled around them. “The other set. I want the other set, too.”
"'I don’t have another set.” She’d always been a terrible liar. Whenever she told a lie, she had an annoying tendency to smile; she didn’t know why.
Anton. There was a guy who could lie. Almost as well as he made love. Maybe better.
“Don’t bullshit me. Everybody has two sets of keys.”
“I lost them.” She felt a little tug at one corner of her mouth. "'I swear.”
"'Get me a phone. I need a phone.”
"'I don’t have one.”
With that, his eyes pinned her right where she stood.
She swallowed.
“You’re not old,” was what he finally said, seeming to have momentarily forgotten about the phone. “I thought you were old.”
Now he was looking at her in a strange way, in a speculative way.
She took a step back, her hand reaching blindly behind her. “Don’t touch me,” she said, her voice quivering.
He frowned, his thick, dark brows drawing together in a menacing way.
She put up a hand as if to hold him back, or deflect the bullet if he decided to use the gun. "'Please think about what you’re doing. You don’t want to add rape to your crimes, do you?”
“What?” His menacing expression changed. Now he was staring at her as if the idea of sex with her was totally ludicrous.
She looked down at herself.
She was wearing a bulky brown jacket. Sticking out from under the jacket was the tattered hem of a wool sweater that just may have been giving off the mothball scent he’d mentioned earlier. Under that was her heavy Polartec. Under that was not one, but two layers of long underwear. Then there was the pair of jeans Libby had begged Claire to let her replace, the ones with the slightly ripped crotch and the more severely ripped knee. The jeans were tucked into a pair of heavy Sorrel boots.
Victoria’s Secret, eat your heart out.
Topping off her ensemble was the stocking cap that one of the residents of Pineview Nursing Home had made for her. It was crocheted granny squares in about every lovely color not found in nature.
She reached up and pulled it off.
Her hair snapped with electricity. She felt it elevating about her head. She put the cap to her nose, but couldn’t smell anything mothbally.
No, sex was probably the farthest thing from the man’s mind.
“Sorry, honey.” There was humor in his dark eyes.
He was laughing at her!
“I don’t have it in me right now. Just get me a phone.”
“I don’t have one,” she repeated.
His gaze moved around the cabin, momentarily stopping on the woodstove, the woodpile, the kerosene lamp that had come in handy on more than one occasion when the power had gone out, then finally coming back to her. “I can’t believe I’ve gotten mixed up with some hippie, some back-to-nature freak with no phone.”
She didn’t care what he thought about her. She just wanted him and his gun out of there.
He smiled. “Somebody could come along and kidnap you, and you wouldn’t be able to call anybody for help.”
Her muscles began to unknot—now that she knew rape wasn’t on the agenda, but she refused to laugh at his pathetic joke.
“If you don’t have a phone, then get me some dry clothes. The sooner you do, the sooner I’ll be out of here.”
Thank God! Oh, thank God!
She hurried from the room and quickly dug through some of Anton’s abandoned clothes, ones she hadn’t yet burned. Her visitor was taller, heavier compared to Anton’s lithe frame. She ended up settling on a pair of jogging pants, plus a flannel shirt she’d given Anton last winter.
He’d hated it.
She also came up with a pair of striped boxer shorts, a white T-shirt, and a pair of heavy wool socks. When she stepped back into the living room, the man had stripped to the waist. The right side of his torso, above the rib cage, was one massive bruise.
“You need a doctor.” It was merely an observation. She didn’t care if he got medical attention. After all, he’d kidnapped her at gunpoint.
“Just gimme the clothes.”
She threw the bundle on the couch.
He unbuttoned his jeans, then reached for the zipper.
On his arm was a strange tattoo, below the tattoo, writing that she couldn’t make out. A gang symbol?
“If you don’t want to get an eyeful, I suggest you turn around.” Without waiting for her to comply, he began peeling off his pants.
She remained where she was, reluctant to turn her back on him.
“But then, maybe you do want to get an eyeful. That’s okay with me. I’m not modest.”
She slowly turned away, and had taken three steps when he stopped her.
“Stay here. Where I see you.”
She waited, her ears fine-tuned. She heard the sound of boots hitting the floor, heard the sound of fabric moving over skin.
She imagined him slipping into the shorts, the pants, the shirt. Until she became aware of the silence behind her.
She waited.
And waited.
Then slowly turned in time to see him collapse on the couch.
Sitting, he lunged for the nearest receptacle, which happened to be the kindling bucket, his gun clattering to the floor. With one hand to his stomach, the other gripping the bucket, he threw up.
When he was finished, he retrieved the gun and fell back against the couch, eyes tightly closed, breathing shallow, his skin the color of paste. The plaid shirt was yet to be buttoned, the tails lying across his thighs.
“Do something with that,” he whispered.
If he hadn’t given her such a direct order, Claire would have had no trouble complying. As it was, Claire had a problem with people trying to tell her what to do. “No.”
“I’ve
got a gun.”
“I won’t clean up after you.”
“Shit.” He got to his feet, grabbed the bucket, shuffled to the front door, put the bucket outside, and let the dog in.
He made it back to the couch, Hallie following, tail wagging, her body language seeming to ask, Am I supposed to be doing this? Even if I’m not, I like it.
With his eyes closed, the man jammed the gun into the waistband of the gray jogging pants.
Claire stared. And stared some more.
At his pallor. At his face that needed to be shaved. At the gun jammed into his pants. Why did men put guns there? It didn’t seem like a good idea.
For a guy, it was like putting a gun to his head.
A hysterical giggle rose in her throat. She put a hand to her mouth, trying to stop it.
Too late.
Dark, hooded eyes flew open. They were gray. She could see that now. “What’s so funny?”
“Isn’t that kind of cold?” She pointed to the weapon in question.
It took him a moment to figure out what she was talking about. When he did, irritation flashed across his features—his reaction to such an inane question. He had bigger problems than cold metal against his belly.
“No," he said slowly. “Haven't you heard? Happiness is a warm gun.”
Chapter 4
“What else do you need? Food? Money?” Claire wanted him out of there as quickly as possible.
“I changed my mind. I’m not leaving.”
“What?”
“Not leaving."
“You said you’d leave if I got you some clothes.”
“I lied.”
She shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Get me some rope.”
“Rope?” She shook her head. “Oh, I’m sure I don’t have anything like that around. I wouldn’t have any use for rope. Never use rope.”
He cast a quick glance around the room, his gaze falling to the floor where an extension cord trailed to a nearby table lamp. He took three steps, bent, and unplugged the cord at both ends, then began moving in her direction.
She shook her head, her eyes locked with his. “Don’t tie me up. Please don’t tie me up."
