Into The Fire jb-4

by David Wiltse

  He spread the charts on the hood of the car at the edge of the field where the revival tent now stood, erected and ready for miracles. He cast a nervous eye at the sky, where the sun was slipping quickly below the trees, then jabbed his finger at a mark on Browne's chart.

  "Here, it's got to be here," he said. His finger pointed to a cave called Devil's Den that looked on the map like an old-fashioned handweight, two ball-shaped caverns connected by a long tunnel.

  "Why?"

  "It's the closest. He could have had her there in twenty minutes. The others are at least forty-five-minute drives from where he took her.

  That one is almost an hour away." His finger danced over the map. Becker was as familiar with its surface as if the marks were dots of Braille and he was blind.

  He swept the map off the hood and replaced it with a sheaf of smaller charts, thumbing quickly through them until he found the one he wanted.

  "He was waiting for her, right? Maybe he'd even made an arrangement to meet her. The Reverend said she ran right into his car. Maybe that's how he gets them; maybe they go willing at first. I don't know. The point is, he didn't just swoop down and grab her on impulse. He didn't snatch her and run for cover as an afterthought.

  He had time to plan it, so he would be heading here."

  The new chart was much smaller in scale and showed the entrance to the cave in relation to the surrounding area. Browne had gone to considerable pains to locate the entrance accurately, which meant that it must be difficult to reach and hard to locate without the map. Becker glanced at the sky once more, angrily, as if the sun were to blame for setting. Pegeen felt as if he were trying to will the sun back up into the sky.

  "Son of a bitch," he said. "It will be dark by the time we get there.

  We'll have to wait till morning."

  "We have flashlights," Pegeen said.

  "Look at the terrain. We'd have to be lucky to find it in the dark, and if we go tromping around flashing lights, and he's in any position to see us, he can slip out undetected. If we go now we're inviting him to get away."

  "I was thinking about the woman," Pegeen said. "Can she make it through another night?"

  Becker looked at her blankly for a moment. "She'll have to make it for another eight hours."

  "If we get there tonight, it might save her life."

  "If we fuck it up and he gets away, he's going to take a lot more lives, and he'll be a lot more careful next time.

  "This woman, this Aural McKesson, is the only life I'm thinking about now. She's the one in danger. God knows what he's doing to her."

  Becker swept up his maps and returned to the car.

  "We'll find out soon enough what he's doing to her," he said.

  "Soon enough for who? How do we know it's going to be soon enough for her?"

  Becker tossed the maps into the backseat and grabbed Pegeen's elbow, yanking her around to face him. The muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched and his eyes were raging.

  "Do you think I don't want him right now?"

  He gripped her arm until she nodded agreement.

  "Yes," she said. "I know you do."

  "We'll wait," he said, releasing her.

  Pegeen put her hands on the steering wheel, borrowin time against her agitation. It was the first time she had been afraid of him. Not that she thought he would harm her. But she realized that he was going to harm someone.

  "All the stories about me are true," he had said. they just don't go far enough." Having looked into his blazing eyes, she began to believe him.

  "Where to?" she asked, starting the car.

  "Find us a motel," he said.

  "Shall I call Nashville for more agents?"

  "What for?"

  "For help."

  "You need help, Haddad? What do you need help with, me?"

  "No, with Swann, of course."

  "How many men do you plan to send down into that cave? We don't know if there's room for us, yet."

  "In case."

  "In case of what?"

  "In case he's not there, in case he went to one of the other caves, in case he didn't go there at all."

  "He's in there," Becker said.

  "How do you know that?"

  Becker did not bother to respond.

  "He's not just yours," she said.

  Becker glared at her.

  "He isn't?"

  "I'm thinking about the woman," she said. She could feel his eyes on her, but she kept her own gaze fixed on the road. Looking directly at him made her more uncomfortable than ever. She was glad it was getting dark so she could avoid his eyes more easily; it seemed to her they had taken on a feral character, as if something wild were hidden within the man and had decided to come out of hiding at last.

  "Good. Do that. I'm thinking about him."

  "He's not our only concern," she said. They had reached the edge of one of the little towns that dotted the Tennessee-Virginia region.

  "He's mine," Becker said. "She's yours. That about covers it, doesn't it? We've got them both taken care of"

  "I think I should call Nashville," she insisted.

  "No," he said flatly.

  After a pause she asked, "Is that an order?"

  "Pull in there," he said, pointing at a motel sign that had just come on in the gathering gloom.

  When they got out of the car and he put his hand on her arm, it was all Pegeen could do to manage not to push it angrily away.

  "Haddad," he said, his voice now soft and calming, "I know what you want. In most cases you'd be right.

  But we don't need help. And they don't want to send it.

  Not now, not when we've found him."

  She looked at him, puzzled.

  "Come on, you get it," he said. "That's why they sent me. II He walked into the motel office, leaving Pegeen to interpret his remark.

  The only translation she could come up with made her shiver.

  She was aware of a presence in the darkness outside her door as she stood in front of the mirror. Pegeen had showered as soon as they checked into the motel, trying to let the hot water wash off the feeling of apprehension that clung to her. Things were not right, the whole inexorable flow of events had shifted in its course and was now heading in a direction she knew was wrong, but she felt powerless to deflect it.

  Becker was suddenly a different man and she realized that he was guiding the flow, he was sitting astride the events now, like a man riding an avalanche, looking to all appearances as if he were controlling it.

  Perhaps he had been all along and she had been so busy looking at him that she had not noticed the ground moving underneath her feet. At one point she had thought this was a Bureau investigation, a search for a felony suspect being assisted somewhat eccentrically by Becker, true, but by her as well, plus the power of the FBI, the speed of computers, the cooperation of countless police, and as with all searches, it took its own course according to leads and clues and circumstance. Now she thought it had been a one-man activity all along, and not a search but a stalk. She had not been assisting, she had been manipulated, just as the whole massive grid of Bureau procedures had been used to provide Becker with what he wanted. Had she been wrong about everything else, too? she wondered. Those qualities of his that had so fascinated her, his strange moodiness, the sense of great vulnerability that hid beneath the facade of strength like a little boy in a suit of armor, the languid, restrained sexuality that seemed to course from his eyes, his hands. Was she mistaken about all of it? One of the things that had so appealed to her was the impression that everything about Becker was under a tight but temporary control like a coiled spring held in check by a hair trigger that would release explosively if she could just find the right spot to touch. She could unleash all that power and passion, she had thought. Stupidly. Stupidly. Now she feared that he was about to blow up in her face.

  She looked at herself in the mirror, a towel wrapped around her head.

  She wore the boxer shorts and tank top s
he normally slept in, and spots of moisture from the shower had darkened areas of the tank top. Her skin seemed even pinker than usual because of the heat of the water and Pegeen cursed her luck for having inherited none of the olive tone of the original Haddad.

  She glanced again at the door with the sense that something was outside.

  She had heard nothing that she was aware of, but still there was the feeling of something waiting there, something large and dangerous. It frightened her first, and then it angered her. Fuck this, she thought, I'm a special agent of the FBI, I'm not supposed to be afraid of unknown creatures in the dark. She pulled her pistol from its holster atop the dresser and opened the door.

  Becker stood several feet away on the concrete porch, leaning against a wooden column, his arms folded across his chest. He was staring at her door, now at her.

  "Don't shoot," he said laconically, not moving.

  Pegeen moved the gun behind her back, feeling foolish.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded.

  "Waiting."

  "What for?"

  Becker said nothing, moved nothing. Even slouching against the column, even in the languid pose of a drugstore cowboy, he looked coiled and ready to strike. Pegeen could make out his features only dimly in the light shining from her window, but she thought he was smiling.

  It's creepy, she thought. What the hell is he up to now?

  What is he doing, what am I supposed to make of it?

  "How long have you been standing there?" she asked.

  He still didn't answer and she could feel his eyes boring into her. She was aware suddenly of what she was wearing, of how her heavy breasts would be showing dark against the tank top, of how her legs would look, too pink and speckled by the heat. The anger of a moment before returned, only now it was directed at him. To hell with how I look, she thought. I'm tired of caring, I'm tired of trying to guess what he's thinking and how I should react to it, I'm tired of the whole damned game, the elaborate tease, for that is what she now realized it had been, his holding back, never saying quite enough to be clear but just enough to keep her guessing, or hoping; that was the problem, the meaner he got to her, the more he withheld from her, the more she trailed hopelessly after him. Classic, she thought. Classic dim-witted behavior, chasing someone inaccessible, it was no, better than that, however she had tried to dress it up with imagination. Well,lfuck it, fuck the game, fuck him.

  "What?" he said.

  "What what?"

  "You should see your face. You look all worked up about something."

  Damn his eyes, too, she thought. He never missed anything.

  "I'm fine," she said.

  "You usually come to the door with a gun in your hand?"

  "When I feel like it. Did you want something? Or are you just hanging around outside my door for fun?"

  She knew for certain that he was smiling now. He turned his head slightly to indicate the door of the adjoining room.

  "I thought I was outside my door."

  Wrong again, Pegeen thought, but now she was too angry to care. Let him have another victory, let her make a fool of herself, it didn't matter anyway.

  Pegeen closed the door and rammed the gun back into its holster. She whipped the towel off her head and glared at her reflection. Sure enough, her ears were fiery red.

  Well, fuck them, too, she thought.

  She flounced onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, trying with all her might to think of something other than Becker. He was an asshole, anyway, and not worthy of her time. He was probably a psycho of some kind-she should have paid attention to the warnings given to her by the agents in the office. Tomorrow she would have to go with him and do God-knew-what under the guise of law enforcement. Think about the woman, Aural McKesson, she told herself.

  Pegeen glanced at the clock on the radio-alarm beside her bed. Think about the woman for the next five minutes, she demanded of herself.

  Think about how you can help her, it's what you're here for, it's why you joined the Bureau. If Becker is right about the way all of this is falling down, you should get to her by tomorrow. If Becker is right, and he seems so confident that he is… shit, she was thinking of Becker.

  She glanced at the clock again, didn't notice what time it said, and crossed to the door. If he's still slouching against that column, I'll fuck him, she thought, but if he's not there, if he's gone into his room, I'll go to bed and never think of him again.

  He was not leaning against the column, he was standing right outside her door, looking as if he were prepared to eat his way through it if necessary.

  Those eyes, Christ those eyes, she thought. They were blazing at her, into her, burning through her.

  She placed her hand on his face and he jerked back slightly as if surprised by the contact. As she ran her fingers from his cheek to the side of his head he shivered like an animal but made no move towards her. It was like stroking the flank of a tiger or a wolf, something wild and dangerous and unaccustomed to human touch, something that tolerated her, uncertain whether to flee, bite, or give itself over to the pleasure.

  She kept her gaze on her hand, watching the fingers as they moved across his flesh, afraid to look directly at him.

  Afraid to look into those eyes again for fear they might devour her.

  When she touched the rim of his ear he jerked again, and gasped. He was quivering all over, his whole body trembling with the effort to hold still.

  "Shhh," she said, not realizing what she was saying.

  It was a sound she would have made to calm an animal.

  She ran her hand along his shoulder, feeling the muscles tense under her touch, then slowly trailed her fingers down his arm. She watched her fingers work, saw his bare skin tighten and spring into gooseflesh. When she reached his hand, she caressed the back of his fingers first, seeing him shiver once more, then gently intertwined her fingers with his. Only then, with their joined hands forming a fist, did she look at his face again.

  God, the intensity of his eyes. So deep and dark, a tumultuous brown sea of emotion with his whole soul riding on it, begging her, beseeching her, but unable to speak, or unheard over the tumultuous roar of his passions.

  If he didn't touch her now, if he didn't respond, she thought he would surely burst, and so would she. Rising up on her toes, she reached for his mouth with hers, letting her eyelids slide down, searching for him blindly. His lips grazed hers and she heard him make a sound, a whimper, then he pulled his head back.

  She looked at him again and saw something change as surely as if something had clicked behind his eyes. Where before he had been all yearning, frightened, vulnerable desire, he was now power. He had taken control of himself. A tiny smile tugged at his lips, knowing, almost mocking.

  He touched her neck first and she could feel the sensation ripple through her entire body, tugging at her loins.

  I'm lost, I may be lost, she thought.

  Becker lifted her, carried her into the room, and pressed her against the door. She felt his whole body tremble as he kissed her.

  It was all so frantic, so kaleidoscopic in its variety that at times Pegeen was not sure where she was as they moved from the door towards the bed with the haphazard logic of a pinball threatening to burst from the confines of the machine. At one point he sat her on the dresser, her legs locked around him, and at another he was behind her, touching her everywhere with hands of fire. He turned her, twisted her, lifted her, held her against the wall, all the while seeking her mouth, his hands seeming to fly over her and torment her with touches that were never long enough. They stumbled once as she was undressing him, Becker tumbling to the floor, pulling her down with him. Pegeen started to laugh at their desperate need, but then he was atop her, pinning her down at first, then rolling so she was atop him, then rolling again.

  He seemed beyond himself, so out-of-control that he did not even know what he wanted from her beyond endless contact, as if he could not get enough of touching her, of kissing her, of
holding her, and yet as if each touch and each position deprived him of another and so he went on and on, clutching and shifting with ceaseless abandon, and everything he did felt right and wonderful to Pegeen, so right and exciting that she was close to losing herself along with him.

  She panted and moaned and found herself shaking her head from side to side as if she were being tortured, but it was a torture that she embraced and demanded and she cried out, uncertain what she was saying, and he responded, growling something low in his throat as his mouth attacked her face, her lips, her neck, her breasts.

  They were nude at last and on the bed and her face was wet with his kisses and her own saliva and her breasts wailed with the pleasure of his mouth and hands and tongue and everything he did and every move he made seemed to gather in her loins and pull at her as if all the nerves in her body were gathered there and screaming and screaming for more, for release.

  Still he didn't enter her but attacked her in a frenzy of hands and mouth, as if he would devour her before he took her. His passion was like a rage and Pegeen was frightened of it as much as she was excited by it. She didn't know what he wanted, what she could give him, and when she tried with her own mouth and hands to give him release he would move away from her, reposition himself and tear at her with pleasure again, too distracted, too delirious to seek relief.

  At first Pegeen was too overwhelmed to let herself go completely; she held her innermost self in reserve while joining in his frenzy with;her senses, taking all the pleasure he had to give her while protecting her emotions.

  She wasn't sure that all of this was for her, that she could have inspired so much heat and sexual fury, that he even knew who he had in his arms and under his tongue, it seemed beyond sex somehow, as if Becker were tormented by a devil who might express himself in sex but could never be fully found there. She did not want to give herself completely to a man who might not even know who he was with and she withheld as long as she could, but finally it was all too much for her, much, much too much and she came to his hand and she came to his mouth and it seemed that she came to his breath alone, screaming oW crying out his name and finally cursing and flailing as if her nerves and senses had taken control of her completely and would never stop and never let her go. And even at the height of her pleasure she was frightened because she had let herself go and had given herself over to him completely and she knew she was lost, lost and hopelessly gone from safety, in his grip and under his power.