by Cindy Dees
“Which she always withholds just a little,” the agent added blandly.
He nodded. “I suppose it’s her way of tying people to her. I always figured she was more insecure than she wanted to let on. Afraid people would abandon her. Her mother abandoned the family. She’s pretty estranged from her siblings.”
“Mmm,” Agent Delaney said noncommittally.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” he asked her, impatient to get back to the business of finding Willa.
“Not right now. You’ve been more helpful than you know,” the FBI analyst replied. “I’ll call you if I have any more questions.”
He stopped briefly at the nurses’ station to relay Melinda’s request that the doctor prescribe her some painkillers, and then he headed out quickly. Whether he was running from Melinda or toward Willa, he couldn’t rightly tell. Both, maybe.
It was fully dark by the time he got back to the last known location of Willa’s GPS. The spot was just inside the rim of the main canyon of the complex of gullies and valleys. His geologist’s eye envisioned the ancient earthquake that had torn this series of giant cracks in the generally flat landscape. Probably a secondary fault related to the massive New Madrid fault that had created the Mississippi River basin.
Willa had been heading west the last time her signal pinged off a cell tower. He thought about what lay west of him. The network of narrow, winding roads that would be treacherous after dark. Willa had been in her little car, which meant she wouldn’t have ventured onto the more isolated tracks that crisscrossed these valleys. Most of them led to deer hunting stands and took a high-clearance, four-wheel drive truck to traverse. She had to have stuck to the main roads...of which there weren’t many out here.
About a mile ahead, this particular road forked. The right branch went due west up over the next ridge, and the left one turned south and wound up to the top of a high bluff overlooking the entire canyon complex. It was a hangout for teens to drink and make out.
Abrupt memory jogged his brain. Willa had commented once that she was the only person who went up to Lover’s Point for the view. Was it possible? Had she gone up there to be alone and think? He vaguely recalled it being a beautiful spot; although, unlike Willa, his reasons for going up there as a teen had never included the view.
He guided his SUV over the ridge and toward the fork in the road. He veered left and started up the winding asphalt strip. He slowed cautiously as the curves became sharper, the road became steeper and the drop-offs grew steeper and closer to the edge of the road.
A cloud bank drifted over the new moon and darkness pressed in on him and his SUV. All that existed was a short strip of asphalt in his headlights. He turned on the Cadillac’s snazzy halogen high beams to better illuminate the road ahead. And that was probably why he spotted the faint skid marks, black slashed on the dark gray pavement.
A little voice in the back of his head shouted, no no no no no! He stopped the SUV and jumped out, his heart in his throat. He approached the precipice cautiously, and nothing but air stretched away from him. But when he reached the edge and peered down, he saw that the broken limestone cliff wasn’t completely vertical. Not far below the road, a stand of scrubby saplings clung to the steep slope. And wedged among them was a small car, resting on its side.
He almost leaped down the slope before his brain kicked in. Rope. He needed rope. Racing back to the Escalade, he set its emergency brake and fished in the back of the SUV for the tow rope he had stowed somewhere. He spotted the bright yellow nylon as thick around as his thumb and snatched it out. Quickly, he lashed one end of it to the hitch in the rear bumper and looped the other end around his body.
Using the rope to slow his descent, he slipped and slid down the nasty incline. Please be alive. Please, please be alive, he begged Willa silently.
He groaned as he made out a white face through the spiderweb of cracked glass that was the windshield. “Willa!” he shouted.
The figure inside the car didn’t move. Horrendous dread clutched at him. She couldn’t be dead. He’d just found her, dammit! He couldn’t lose her!
He slipped and slid to the car, which actually was resting mostly on all four tires. It was tilted onto its side by the severity of the slope. Tree branches poked through the passenger window and roof, skewering the tiny car like a shish kebab. A deflated air bag hung from the steering wheel, and another smaller one from over the driver’s side door, partially obscuring Willa. He yanked at the door, but it didn’t open. Given how badly the entire frame of the car was bent, he doubted it would budge.
In through the windshield, then. He eased left toward the hood of the car. Bracing himself on a tree trunk, he kicked at the windshield. As badly damaged as the tempered glass was, it bent inward but didn’t give way. He jammed his heel into the thing again, and this time it shattered into millions of little pieces. Using his bare hands, he ripped away the remaining bits of glass.
His heart stopped as he glimpsed Willa. She was as white as a ghost and slumped in her seat belt like a rag doll. Oh, God. He lunged forward, reaching for her throat. Have a pulse. Have a pulse. Have a pulse.
There. A faint bump against his fingertip under her skin. Alive!
He put his weight on the edge of the window frame to reach for the seat belt release and the entire car lurched ominously. He froze, swearing. The trees that her car rested upon were perilously small saplings, and they were bent over badly under the weight of the car. He noted with dread that there were no more trees beyond them. The cliff dropped off more sharply beyond this one spot that the tree roots held tenuously in place.
He eased his weight more gently onto the car frame and the trees creaked ominously. Swearing, he reached under Willa for her seat belt. It was twisted, and with her entire body weight resting on it, not about to release. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his trusty Swiss Army knife. Opening the main blade quickly, he sawed at the nylon webbing holding Willa in place.
While he did so, he visually checked her for obvious wounds or broken bones. There was a fair bit of dried blood on her face, but he’d seen enough facial cuts around the oil rigs to know they bled a lot. None of her limbs looked to be lying unnaturally, or bent where they shouldn’t be. Internal injuries would be the real killer, of course. But a tiny spark of hope lit in his gut.
The seat belt gave way all at once and Willa nearly fell out the passenger window before he could grab her under the armpits. The car jerked hard and one of the saplings snapped in half. Crap. With that tree gone, it would throw all that much more weight on the remaining trees. They could all fail at any second.
He backed out of the car fast, relieved to get his weight on the ground, as steep and slippery as it was. He dragged Willa awkwardly through the windshield. Her shirt tore on a piece of metal and the loud tearing sound startled him.
She stirred faintly, and flapped her arms feebly. He nearly lost his grip on her as the car lurched again, the sapling under the engine cracking and giving way in slow motion.
Crap, crap, crap. Sitting on his rear end on the steep slope, he dragged Willa up and over the engine block of her ruined car. Another sapling gave way with a loud, sudden crack like a gunshot.
Hugging Willa against him, he lay down entirely, her body on top of his. He was able to let go of her long enough to lash the rope around her, looping it under her armpits in a makeshift navy loop. The car shifted beside them, rolling slowly onto its roof as branches snapped one by one in a stately progression toward oblivion.
He pushed against the loose shale with his heels, moving himself and Willa a few inches up the steep slope. Again. A few more inches. He grabbed the rope above Willa’s head with one hand and heaved hard as he pushed with his feet. That gained them a full foot. The car flipped over quickly below them then. It rolled from its roof onto the passenger side, perched there for a breathless moment, and then plunged over the edge, swallowed by the yawning abyss below.
Crashing noises followed
by ominous silence marked the end of Willa’s car. The cliff loomed above them, and only a thin length of nylon stood between the two of them and the same fate as her car.
It was a tortuously slow journey up the cliff. Stones rolled out from under his feet and dug into his back painfully as he made his way back up the slope with Willa sprawled on top of him. His arms ached, then burned like fire, then went numb and heavy under the strain of hauling both of them up the mountain, inch by agonizing inch.
It gave him plenty of time to think about what would have happened to her if he hadn’t come back to look for her again. Plenty of time to ponder his life without Willa, with only a hole in his heart where she used to live. Plenty of time to make peace with the fact that he loved this woman, age difference or not, parentage or not, social status or not. And most important of all, whether or not she returned his feelings.
He had given her his love without any expectation of payment in kind, and the notion shocked him. Was this that selflessness people talked about when the subject of true love came up? He’d always rolled his eyes at those sappy souls. Love was about bargaining like everything else in life.
Lord knew it had been a coldly calculated deal between him and Melinda. I help your career, you help mine. I boost your social standing, you boost my image. It had been purely a business deal between them, but they’d both been either too jaded or too damned ignorant of what love was to know they hadn’t gotten it right at all. Hell, in retrospect, he doubted Melinda had ever loved anyone in her entire life. For that matter, neither had he. Until now.
He grunted and groaned, straining for every inch of progress up that damned cliff, carrying Willa along with him. As painful as it was.
* * *
They had almost reached the top when she roused again.
Disoriented, she tried to push up to her hands and knees and succeeded in causing a mini-avalanche that slid them a dozen heart-stopping feet back down the cliff before he was able to dig in hard enough with his heels to stop the plunge toward death.
“Don’t move,” he grunted as he gripped her tightly against him with both arms. She struggled weakly and he tried again to get through to her. “Willa. It’s Gabe. I’ve got you. I need you to relax and trust me. Let me do all the work.”
Whether she heard him or not, he couldn’t tell. But she subsided against him once more and he went back to work climbing that damned cliff bit by painful bit.
Finally, his head cleared the slope. He pushed once more and his shoulders reached the edge of the road. One more big push and he was able to roll onto his side, laying Willa on the road’s shoulder. Breathing hard, he dragged himself up one last time by the rope and landed on the flat road beside Willa. Panting, he pushed to his feet. His arms were in so much pain, he barely registered the gravel grinding into his palms and scraping them raw.
Exhausted, he summoned the strength to lift Willa in his arms. He laid her in the back of the SUV, climbed in the vehicle and carefully U-turned on the narrow road to point it down the mountain. Driving as fast as he dared, he headed back to Vengeance Hospital.
Most of the news crews had left, along with the fire department and their barricades. He pulled up in front of the emergency-room door and raced around to the back of the Escalade. He picked up Willa, who was still unconscious, and hurried into the emergency room with her.
The same nurse Melinda had snapped at took one look at the two of them and ordered, “This way.”
He followed her into the examining room across the hall from Melinda’s and laid Willa on the bed there. He wasn’t surprised as another nurse and the doctor who’d treated Melinda shoved him aside. But he was surprised as a third nurse took him by the arm and led him into the next room.
“She’s the one who’s hurt. Not me,” he protested.
“Have you looked at yourself in a mirror?” she asked.
“No.”
“How does your back feel?”
Now that she mentioned it, his back did burn a bit. “I guess it hurts a little.”
“What happened to you? It looks like a mountain lion attacked you.”
Oh. All of a sudden, his entire body felt like raw hamburger. “That would be the stones, I suppose. I had to carry Willa up a cliff. It was so steep I had to lie on my back and push us up the slope.”
“I’m going to cut off your shirt, Mr. Dawson. And then I’m going to clean out your cuts and see if any of them need stitches. This might sting a little.”
He yelped as the nurse’s idea of a little sting hit his skin. Acid wouldn’t have hurt much more, he reflected as he tried to distract himself from the fire on his back. The next several minutes were spent in grim silence while the nurse worked, and he gasped periodically.
Finally, she announced, “All done. Mostly scratches and contusions. It’s going to be uncomfortable for a few days, but it should heal up. I’ll have the doc come take a look at you when he’s done with the young woman.”
“How is she?”
“Now, how would I know?” the nurse asked gently. “I’ve been in here the whole time taking care of you.”
“Could you check for me? Is she going to be all right?”
“Are you family?”
“Might as well be. She’s got no one else. Well, technically, her mother’s alive, but that woman’s less than useless right now. Her mom’s the reason she was out driving on that dangerous road, anyway.”
The nurse left without comment and he swore under his breath, agonizing. Willa had to be okay. She had to. He prayed hard then, making every bargain with God he could think of if He would just save Willa’s life.
The nurse poked her head back in a few minutes later. “Since you’re not family I can’t say anything, but if you were family, I’d tell you your friend is alive.”
“What else would you tell me?” he asked anxiously.
“She hit her head. Concussion. Going to have to spend a day or two here for observation at a minimum. She’s gone for an MRI to rule out any internal injuries, but initial indications don’t show anything life threatening. She’s regained consciousness. Is asking for you. As soon as she’s done getting scanned, you can see her.”
Gabe jumped up off the edge of the bed and gave the nurse a big hug.
“Easy, there,” she exclaimed. “I just got your bleeding stopped. Don’t make me clean you up twice.”
He let go and stepped back sheepishly.
“By the way, your ex-wife has been moved to a room. The doctor wanted to release her, but she made such a stink about it that he finally gave in. What a bi—” the nurse broke off. “Uhh, interesting woman, your wife.”
He replied blandly, “She can be quite a bitch, too.”
The nurse smiled broadly at him. “There’s a big pile of paperwork out front for you to fill out when you have a moment.”
He nodded, and spent the next half hour filling out the required insurance forms and questionnaires on himself and Willa. He indicated that he would pay for any medical costs her insurance didn’t cover.
He glanced at the big clock on the wall. Nearly eleven o’clock. If he was lucky, Melinda would be asleep by now, and this obligatory sympathy visit would be short and sweet.
Nonetheless, he got directions and headed up to the third floor where Melinda’s room was. He stopped by the nurses’ station to inquire about her, but a screech of fury from her room answered the question of whether or not she was asleep.
The duty nurse glared up at him in exasperation.
“Horse tranquilizers might shut her up,” he commented drily.
“Or a ball-peen hammer,” the woman snapped back.
They broke into simultaneous smiles. Gabe murmured, “Could you tell her I stopped by to ask about her...after she went to sleep?”
“Gabe? Is that you?” Melinda called out from her room.
Drat.
“Busted,” the nurse whispered sympathetically.
“If there’s any word on Willa Merris, will you com
e rescue me?”
The nurse nodded conspiratorially. Steeling himself to endure one of Melinda’s patented tirades, he stepped into her room. But his heart was in another part of the building entirely.
Chapter 16
Willa started as she opened her eyes and was surrounded by nothing but white. Had she died? “Where am I?” she asked experimentally.
A disembodied voice answered, “You’re in an MRI machine, Miss Merris. Please don’t move. We’re almost done.”
“I’m alive, then?”
“Very much so.”
That was good, at any rate. “How did I get here?”
“An orderly wheeled you down here on a gurney.”
“No. I mean to the hospital.”
“Mr. Dawson brought you in.”
So, she hadn’t imagined that dream of him cradling her with his body and climbing out of hell with her. Except it hadn’t been hell. It had been outside, though. She remembered feeling a breeze on her skin. And the acrid taste of limestone dust.
Something bad had happened.... She tried to remember, but only snatches came back to her. Strange laughter echoing around her. Someone pushing her. No, not her. She frowned and tried hard to remember. Her car. Someone pushed her car.
Abruptly, memory exploded of standing on her brake pedal with all her strength while her little car slid over the edge of a cliff on the way to Lover’s Point.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. She tried to sit up, but something restrained her.
“Please, ma’am. Don’t move.”
“Someone tried to kill me. I remember now!”
A pause. “Who?”
“I don’t know. A car. No. A van.”
“A van tried to kill you?” the voice asked doubtfully.
“Well, obviously not the van itself. Someone in a van. It hit me and then pushed me off the road.”
“I’ll notify the police, ma’am. But please lie still.”
She subsided, impatient for the stupid MRI to end. “Where’s Gabe?”
