Blessed fresh air hit her face. She was outdoors, in the woods, stumbling forward, running full force, and she didn’t look back. Not once. She kept on going, sure she was being pursued as her fogged mind slowly lost itself to whatever poison that bastard had shot into her body. She tried to keep running even when her feet no longer felt the impacts of her steps. She fell, got up, tried again, fell again, got up again. God, she couldn’t stop. Not now. Not until she found a place to hide, or a place with people or—or something.
Footsteps were coming up behind her! Oh, God, he was after her. She’d been right! “Stay away!” she cried.
“Wait!” a man’s voice shouted. “Wait, please!”
“Leave me alone!”
Once more she pulled herself upright, grabbing onto a sapling for support. Swaying on her feet, she ran, stumbling forward and breaking through a wall of brush into nothingness. There was no ground beneath her feet anymore, and she was falling rapidly through what seemed like endless darkness.
13
Six in the morning.
Carrie crossed the deck attached to the back of the rented log cabin and let the cold morning air chase her emotional exhaustion away. She wore her jeans from yesterday, warm socks and running shoes, and she’d borrowed one of Gabe’s large hooded sweatshirts from the hook on the wall inside.
She hadn’t planned to spend the entire day and then the night there. It had just turned out that way. She had let Bryan know where to reach her and had checked in with him often, but aside from learning that the anonymous person offering the reward had agreed, through a screen of lawyers, to publicly withdraw it, there had been no news.
And yet the day had been healing, somehow. Gabe and Sam had played guitar together, while she’d listened and offered advice on a lyric or two. They’d spent time on the dock down by the lake, just staring out at the water in silence. They’d cooked together in the kitchen, making more than anyone felt like eating and vowing to save the leftovers for when Sadie came back. They’d gone for a long walk, watched an old screwball comedy, and talked until they’d talked themselves out. None of them had forgotten about Sadie, not for one minute. On the contrary, she’d been the main topic of conversation and constantly on their minds.
They’d agreed, the three of them, to drive down the mountain just far enough to see the candlelight prayer vigil, but not to join in. It had felt sacred, somehow, to get out of the car on the dirt road that wound down the mountainside to stand, just the three of them, and look down at the mass of twinkling firefly-like candles below. There had to have been hundreds of them, lighting the night. Carrie said a silent thank-you to Rose as they looked on.
They watched the gathering for an hour, maybe a little more, until the tiny lights began blinking out one by one. And then they said their own silent prayers and headed back to the cabin.
Gabe’s notion of positive thinking, positive living, being the fastest and best way to bring Sadie home safe and sound might be a little bit out there, but it had done Sam a world of good. His mood had improved. He seemed hopeful again. And eventually he’d even slept. He’d still been sleeping when Carrie crept out of the cabin for an early walk.
The water of the lake gleamed under the pink and orange sunrise as she stood on the dock, and the birds seemed to grow louder and more raucous as the sky grew brighter. It smelled like fall. Apples and a few decaying leaves and cold, frost-kissed air.
“Beautiful,” Gabe said softly.
She didn’t jump, wasn’t startled by his voice coming from so close behind her. She’d hoped he would come out and join her. She’d stayed with Sam last night, in a room with twin beds in it, while Gabe had slept in the room he’d been using since he’d been there. She hadn’t dared do otherwise. This was not the time for Sam to wake to the sounds of his mother making love—even to a man he liked as much as he liked Gabe.
And she’d also known that was what would happen if she left the room after Sam fell asleep. So she hadn’t. Now, though…
“It is beautiful,” she agreed softly, staring out at the lake. There were ducks floating serenely, and every once in a while a big fish jumped up to catch an insect, arcing and splashing as it disappeared again, leaving only the ever-widening rings in the water to mark its brief display.
“I was talking about you,” Gabe said. His hands touched her shoulders, turned her to face him, and he moved in to kiss her. Their lips met and immediately parted, then met again. She shivered, and her arms curled around his neck. Her body pressed closer, and his did, too.
She rubbed against him, felt him, knew he wanted her and gently pulled her mouth free of his gentle suction. “Sam?” she asked.
“Still sleeping.”
“Do you think…?”
“I think he’ll be fine,” he said, and he kissed her again. Then he pulled her legs upward, anchoring them around his waist, and he carried her off the dock and into the sheltering trees along the lakeshore. “I can see the back door from here,” he whispered. “But it’s private, and it’s fine.” He dropped to his knees, still holding her, then fell forward, so that she landed on her back, his arms still around her. A huge pile of dried, fragrant maple leaves were their bed, and she felt tears burning in her eyes as he kissed her again.
“I feel something for you,” he told her as he pulled off the hoodie she’d borrowed, and then the blouse beneath it. “This isn’t just a…a fling.”
“For me either.” She took his shirt off, as well, struggling with the buttons because her hands were trembling. But once she got them undone and pushed the fabric down his shoulders, she was lost in staring at his broad chest, his flat belly, the dark hairs low on his abdomen making a trail that led lower.
She forced her eyes upward again, only to find his gaze on her breasts, plumped with extra cleavage thanks to the bra she wore. She hated to take it off, but he was way ahead of her, unhooking it already, pulling it away, staring at her chest as if he were looking at an undiscovered Rembrandt.
She caught her breath when he touched, squeezed and then kissed them. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, and let him explore and taste all he wanted. And soon enough he was reaching for her jeans, unfastening the fly and shoving them down over her hips.
She helped him out of his own, pulled him on top of her and kissed him again as he nudged his way inside her. From then on, she didn’t think or know anything at all. There was just feeling. Delicious, sensual, beautiful feeling—like melding with him, body and soul. And the release she found in his arms was the closest thing she had ever felt to heaven.
Three hours later, Gabe was still trying to figure out what had made sex with Carrie so different from sex with anyone else ever. Because it had been different. It had been more intense, more natural, more…blissful than anything he’d felt before.
And yet he was still lying to her. And feeling worse about it every day, with every meeting of their eyes, every touch of her hand. Not only that, but he was dreading the moment when he had to tell her the truth, thinking up more and more reasons to delay it.
For now, all that was important was finding Sadie. He knew that. But for the life of him, it was tough to focus on anything besides Carrie right now.
They’d joined the morning gathering of volunteers at the firehouse and were even now hiking through the forest, poking into brush, calling Sadie’s name and carrying those reusable plastic backpacks with the posters and whistles inside. Gabe kept Carrie and Sam close to him, in case they needed him, and wondered who he was kidding. He was the one who needed them.
Damn, his life had changed in the past few days more than it had in the previous twenty years. It was amazing.
Along with the other searchers, they moved slowly through the woods, Most of the volunteers seemed grim, dreading what they might find. Sam, though, seemed hopeful. Tired and stressed, worried still. But hopeful. Gabe thought he might have managed to ease the young man’s mind a little bit yesterday. He hoped so. And while he wasn’t sure tha
t spending another day searching the forest was doing anyone any good, not with the memory of how they’d found Kyle Becker so fresh in everyone’s mind, he knew that Sam had to be doing something. And this was the only thing he’d been able to think of.
With everything in him, Gabe wanted to take Sam aside and tell him that he was pretty sure he was his father. But he couldn’t do that, not until he was completely sure. And certainly not until he had come clean with Carrie. And maybe not until this child killer was caught, because God knew, the revelation would make Gabe into the newest and by far the most interesting suspect. Time would be lost while the police focused on him, time Sadie needed if she were going to survive.
So his revelations would just have to wait. And yeah, he knew that was probably just another excuse, even if a good one, to put off the inevitable moment when Carrie stopped feeling anything for him but anger.
A few yards to his right, she stumbled on a root and fell forward, catching herself on a sapling. She was tired, as much as she denied it. He thought their lovemaking this morning had been as great a release for her as it had been for him, but as good as it had been, it couldn’t make up for lack of sleep, or the tension and worry on her mind.
“Let’s take a break,” Gabe said, loudly enough so that Sam, on his left, and Ambrose, a few yards farther away, could hear him. “Five minutes, okay?”
Carrie sent him a grateful look and started toward him, flipping her backpack off her shoulders and digging around inside as she walked. She pulled out a bottle of water and sank onto a nearby stump to drink deeply.
Sam headed over, as well, and Ambrose trailed a few steps behind. But then Sam stopped walking and looked ahead to where a twisting stream cut a path through the trees. “Wait.” He held up a hand then pointed. “What’s that over there?”
Carrie rose from her tree stump, and Gabe turned to look. A colorful bundle lay on the ground near the edge of the stream, at the base of a high rocky drop-off. A bundle that didn’t belong there.
Sam lunged toward it, even as Carrie said, “Sam, wait!” And then she was running after him.
Gabe took off, too, passing Carrie in his effort to catch up with Sam, and with every forward stride, he could see that the bundle on the ground more clearly resembled a human being. A girl. Sadie.
“Sadie!” Sam shouted. “God, Sadie!” And then he was on the ground, bending close to her face, touching her cheeks.
Gabe dropped to his knees beside them, his heart in his throat. Sadie’s eyes were closed, her face was scraped and bruised, and her clothes were torn in places. “Easy, Sam,” Gabe said. “Let me—”
“She’s not moving! Gabe, she’s not—”
“She’s alive.” Carrie’s voice was firm and calm as she knelt between them, pushing them aside to get access. Gabe and Sam moved over to give her more room, as Ambrose, panting, stopped a couple of feet away.
Sam didn’t take his eyes off Sadie as Carrie leaned in close, her fingers pressing against Sadie’s neck, her eyes quickly sweeping the girl’s body from head to toe.
“She’s alive,” Carrie repeated. “Sam, put your jacket over her. You, too, Gabe. Just don’t move her head, or twist her neck or spine. Don’t move her at all if you can help it. We don’t know how bad this is.”
Sam obeyed, shrugging quickly out of his jacket as Carrie took off her own, rolled it up and used it to elevate Sadie’s feet. As he watched her, Gabe noticed a metal shackle clasped around one of Sadie’s ankles, trailing a length of rusty chain.
Ambrose was pulling out his whistle to sound the alarm, but Carrie caught sight of him and held up a hand. “Don’t do that. I’ll use the phone. We don’t need a big crowd out here, just a backboard.” She pulled out her phone, punched in a number, then spoke to someone, filling them in.
Gabe tucked his jacket around Sadie as securely as he could without moving her, then sat back on his heels and looked around.
“Bryan says to be careful where we step,” Carrie said when she disconnected. “It’s a crime scene.”
“I don’t think so.” Gabe looked up. “I think the crime scene is up there somewhere,” he said, pointing.
Carrie followed his gaze up the more or less sheer face of the stone wall beside the stream, which shot straight up for about fifty feet before ending in dense forest.
“She must have fallen. She must have been running for her life,” he said, and glanced at her shackle, shivering at the thought of her being chained like an animal before pushing the image away. “It was probably dark. She ran right over the edge.”
“Or she was pushed,” Ambrose put in, shaking his head sadly as he, too, gauged the distance Sadie had apparently fallen. Then he closed his eyes as if the thought were too much to bear and failed to suppress a shudder.
“The bruises and scrapes are consistent with a fall from that height.” Carrie narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, look, there are some broken saplings sticking out halfway up. And is that a piece of her blouse, clinging to that briar right there?”
“Could be,” Gabe said.
Carrie returned her attention to the girl, and Gabe watched, in awe of her expertise, as she moved her hands carefully over Sadie’s body.
“She’s got a broken arm, at the least,” Carrie said. “Where are the EMTs, for God’s sake?”
“You only called two minutes ago, hon.” Gabe caught his breath when he realized he’d used the endearment, but he didn’t think she was listening.
“Sadie. Sadie, c’mon, baby, open your eyes,” Sam was saying. “C’mon, be okay. Please be okay.”
Sadie’s eyes moved behind her closed lids. Carrie saw it and met Sam’s eyes, her own hopeful.
“That’s it,” Sam went on. “You’re trying. I can see you’re trying. Come on, Sadie, talk to me. Open your eyes and talk to me,” he whispered.
Finally the thick lashes flitted open, then squeezed closed again, tightly, as if the light hurt her eyes.
“Sadie?” Sam asked.
“I got away,” she whispered, and then her face relaxed into unconsciousness again.
Carrie and Gabe exchanged a glance. There was no question that someone had been holding her. Someone, Gabe thought, up there. He lifted his gaze to the top of the drop-off, and felt a dark anger uncoiling at the base of his spine and heating his entire body. “I’m going up there,” he said.
The tone of his voice must have startled Carrie, because even as he rose, she gripped his forearm and pulled him back down. “I need you here.”
“You’re fine. The paramedics will be here any—”
“We need you here, Gabe.” She said it again, including Sam, and maybe Sadie, as well, this time.
It got to him, reminded him who he was. Not an angry, vengeful vigilante. Not a violent human being. A caring, feeling, peaceful, man. And a better man for having met these two—these three—who surrounded him now.
And Sadie was alive, he reminded himself. Sadie was alive, thank God, and safe with the people who loved her.
A short while later Sadie was in a warm hospital bed, wearing a clean hospital gown and a cast on her right arm. Carrie leaned a little closer to her, running a hand through her hair and watching her eyes move rapidly beneath their closed lids.
“It’s okay to wake up now,” Carrie told her, as she’d been doing for a solid twenty minutes. “No one’s going to hurt you. You’re safe now, Sadie. You’re safe.”
Sadie’s eyes opened, then widened, and she gasped and jerked in the bed, her gaze swinging wildly from side to side as she flung back the sheets, before she finally went still and seemed to focus on where she was. Blinking and confused, she met Carrie’s eyes at last. “I’m in the hospital.”
“Yeah, you are. And it’s okay. You’re all right, hon. You’re safe. It’s all over.”
“I…got away.” Sadie let her head fall back onto the pillows. “I got away. Oh, God, I got away. But then I fell and—”
“And that’s where we found you. You’re safe now,” Carrie s
aid gently. “How are you feeling?”
“Sleepy. Weak. My head’s kind of…swimmy feeling.” Sadie’s eyes flashed wider. “I was drugged—”
“I know. You were injected with Benterol. It’s okay, though, it’s mostly out of your system by now. I promise, you’re fine.”
Sadie blinked as if it were taking her an inordinate amount of time to process the words. “My arm hurts.”
“It’s broken. It’s the only thing that is, but you’ve got a nasty ankle sprain, and a whole lot of bumps and bruises from the fall, too.”
Sadie rolled her eyes, shook her head very slightly on the pillows. “I thought you said I was fine.”
That made Carrie smile and flooded her with relief. “Ahh, sarcasm. You really are okay. And you’re safe.”
Sadie drew a deep breath and sighed. “I thought I was going to end up…”
“I know. But try not to think about that right now. Think about the fact that you got away, that you’re going to be okay, that you’re here and safe and relatively intact.”
Sadie nodded as Carrie spoke, and her body seemed to relax a bit more in the bed. “Where’s Sam?” she asked, looking toward the door.
“In the waiting room, pacing and impatient to talk to you. So are the police, for that matter.”
“Sam. I want Sam,” the girl said softly.
“I’ll get him.” Carrie turned and started to leave the room, but before she’d taken a single step away from Sadie’s bedside, the girl reached out and grabbed her hand in a desperate hold.
Carrie looked at her again, saw the fear in her eyes and felt a huge lump rise in her throat, making it hard to speak and impossible to swallow. “I’m sorry, Sadie. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can have someone send Sam in from right here.” She depressed the call button, and when a nurse answered, she said, “It’s Dr. Overton in room two-twenty. My son, Sam, is in the waiting room. I’d like you to send him in.”
Kiss Me, Kill Me Page 19
