by Aimée Thurlo
Fear tightened its grip around her as she dialed his number again. He still wasn’t answering his pager or his cellular phone. It didn’t make sense, not unless he was…No. She pushed the thought back. She wouldn’t give in to panic.
She’d just decided to try Gabriel’s number when the phone rang. Even as she picked up the receiver, she knew it wouldn’t be Lucas.
She was right. She listened as Gabriel asked about his wife. “Lanie’s okay, but I’m afraid Lucas might be in trouble,” she said quickly. “I’ve been trying to reach him, and it’s not like Lucas to be out of touch this long.”
“Something might have gone haywire with his cell phone.”
“Gabriel, listen to me. My feelings for your brother tie me to him in a way I can’t really explain. It isn’t anything magical. It’s simply a gift women have. Believe me when I tell you it can be relied upon, and right now it’s telling me Lucas is in trouble.”
“Women’s intuition,” he acknowledged. “I’m not one to discount that easily. All right. I’ll see if I can track him down and I’ll keep you updated.”
“After what we discussed earlier, I think you should probably check either at Earl’s house, at the newspaper office or wherever Alex lives.”
“Earl hasn’t been seen for some time. I already told Shadow that. I also made Shadow give me his word that he wouldn’t approach Alex. That’s a tricky situation, and I didn’t want him to muddy the waters.”
“Lucas wouldn’t break his word,” she said thoughtfully, “but if he thought there was a way to get some evidence against Alex…”
“Oh, yeah. That sounds like Shadow, all right. I’ll head over to the newspaper office right now.”
Marlee glanced down the hall. She couldn’t leave Lanie alone. Yet every fiber in her body told her Lucas was in danger. She desperately needed to do more than simply wait for Gabriel’s call.
She telephoned Nydia, hoping against hope she and her husband had returned from the mountains. If Joshua or his wife could come and stay with Lanie, then Marlee would be free to help Gabriel search. As she dialed, Marlee heard Lucas call her name. The whisper touched her mind like a soft, warm summer breeze. Marlee held her breath as a feeling of love swept through her, then slowly gave way to a profound sense of loss.
Marlee gasped as horror and fear drove the air out of her lungs. Lucas needed her, and there wasn’t much time.
NYDIA WALKED into Gabriel and Lanie’s house a short time later. Her eyes widened as she looked at Marlee’s face. “Are you okay?”
Marlee reached up and touched her scar. Nydia’s gaze had unconsciously stopped there. “I’ll be fine—it’s Lucas I’m worried about. I need to go find him.”
Nydia nodded once. “You’re lucky you called when you did. We’d only just returned from the mountains.” She tossed Marlee her keys. “Take my car, and go do whatever you have to. I’ll stay with my sister-in-law.”
Marlee was surprised that she’d asked for no explanations. “Lanie’s sleeping right now, and should be fine. I still have Gabriel’s extra cell phone. If there are any problems, call me. I’ll be back here in a flash.”
Marlee went to the boardinghouse to see if Lucas had left any message there. Not finding one, she retrieved her carving of the raven from her room before heading out the door. The moment her hand closed around the carving, her body seemed to relax. She knew she was reacting like someone given a placebo, but it didn’t matter. She’d take all the help she could get now. A new sense of confidence filled her. She was halfway to the car when the cellular phone rang. Her heart froze as she heard Gabriel’s somber voice.
“I just found my brother, and you were right. Shadow’s in bad shape. I think he’s been poisoned. He was tied up and dumped in the shed behind the newspaper office. Lanie says you’ve had some medical training. I could really use your help. I’m on my way to the first-aid station with him right now. The airlift helicopter can’t get here because of high winds in the Santa Fe area, so I need to use the radio he has there to communicate with the doctors over at county hospital. The doctors will give us all the advice they can, but my medical training doesn’t go beyond first aid.”
“Mine does,” Marlee said. “I’ll meet you there.”
Marlee pressed down on the accelerator, knowing every minute was critical. The headlights would do little to reveal the glare ice on the darkened road, but if Lucas had been poisoned, there wasn’t time for caution. The thought of losing him filled her with such anguish her body began to tremble.
She gripped the steering wheel tightly, forcing herself to focus only on the present. She hadn’t lost him yet. This was the time to fight, not the time to grieve.
Using every bit of her driving skills, Marlee managed to keep the unfamiliar vehicle on the road. Then, just as she carefully negotiated a curve, she saw a brief flash of light in her rearview mirror.
In the darkness, she couldn’t make out who was behind her, but the elevation of the headlights told her it was a pickup. She focused again on the road ahead, but the high-beam lights of the truck behind her were getting brighter in the mirror, distracting her and blinding her, as well. She reached up to adjust the rearview mirror to divert the light. Just then, the pickup accelerated to ram the rear bumper of her car.
The steering wheel jerked out of her hand, but she quickly grabbed it tightly again, fighting to stay on the road. She tried to get a look at the driver behind her, but it was impossible with the blinding light from the high beams. Using all her willpower, she concentrated on one thing only, staying on the road. She was fighting for Lucas’s life now, not just her own. Her enemy would not win.
All she needed now was one break. She’d try something unexpected. Just as her attacker moved up to ram her vehicle again, she picked a spot that looked free of rocks and turned off the road.
Bouncing around like a pebble in a can, Marlee struggled to keep her vehicle under control. Unless she slowed down, she’d crash into the big rock ahead, or worse, go over the cliff just beyond it. Marlee managed to swing the car side-ways without rolling and slide to a stop about a foot away from the rock.
Still shaking, she saw the driver of the pickup rocket past her, the rear end of his truck fishtailing as he tried desperately to brake in the icy snow. The momentum of his heavy truck now worked against him, but still, he almost succeeded. A heartbeat later, she saw the ruby taillights slowly rise up into the air as the vehicle tipped over the rim of the canyon.
Marlee threw open her door. She didn’t want to stop now, particularly not for someone who’d just tried to kill her, but she had no choice. There had been no sound of a crash, so maybe something had slowed the descent of the pickup.
As she made her way through the snow, she called in he accident using her cellular phone. She got no answer from Gabriel, and the dispatcher told her there was no one available to respond except for the volunteer fire depart-nent, and they were already pulling someone back onto the road who’d gone into a ditch. It would be a half hour before hey could get to the scene. She knew it was her responsibility legally and ethically to help the crash victim, if she could without endangering herself any further.
Marlee stood at the top of the incline and looked down. The pickup had dropped about twenty feet, and was now landwiched precariously between two slender trees grow-ng out of the cliffside. The driver’s-side window had shat-ered. The man inside was struggling to open his door, which was further blocked by a thick stand of scrub oak brush. The vehicle shifted as he pushed from the inside, and one of the trees crackled with the strain.
Marlee climbed carefully down toward the pickup, intent on learning the identity of the man who’d tried to kill her. She was not surprised to see Earl Larrabee inside the cab, his face covered with blood and embedded glass fragments. Again he tried to force the driver’s door open.
“Don’t move,” Marlee yelled. “If you keep shifting your weight around, you’ll shake the truck loose from the only thing holding it up here.”
“I can’t…won’t…stay here,” he managed to say, and leaned over, trying to go out the passenger’s side. He hurried back as the truck began to swing dangerously. “Did you come to gloat?”
“I came to help you. But if you keep trying to get out of there, you’ll rock the truck so much it’ll fall. You’ll die. Why don’t you try crawling out the driver’s-side window instead?”
“I can’t, not without your help. Give me your hand.”
Marlee fought against her common sense, which warned her clearly against getting within reach of this man. She should leave this would-be murderer to face the consequences of his own actions and hurry to Lucas’s side.
“Please, give me a hand. I think the truck is about to go,” he begged.
Marlee knew she’d never be able to live with herself if she just walked away from someone, anyone, in need. Overcoming her reluctance, she extended her hand, and braced herself as he tried to climb out of the car window to reach her.
“Ironic, isn’t it? Here you are helping me stay alive when I just almost killed you.” He reached out the window and took her hand, his grip tightening painfully. “Don’t you know who I really am? I scarred up those photos in your house, and I broke your front window. I did everything I could to ruin your cozy life here in Four Winds. I even blackmailed Rosa, forcing her not to take credit from anyone to make things even more tense here in town while I spread rumors about you everywhere. I wanted people in this town to turn on you just as you made my wife turn on ?me.
“I know who you are. I’m really sorry that you’ve never been able to accept the responsibility for your own actions. Your wife loved and trusted you. You were the one who refused to get medical care for her, and she paid for your negligence with her life.”
“Your friendship with my wife is what changed her. She stopped listening to me after you came into our lives.” He managed to get half his body through the window, but then, with a groan, settled back.
“What’s wrong?”
“A piece of glass,” he muttered. He broke the remaining fragments from the bottom of the shattered window then tried to crawl through again. “You ruined my life. You left me with a baby who had no mother to take care of her.”
“Where’s the baby now?”
“I gave her up for adoption. I had no way of taking care of her.”
His grip on her hand was viselike now, and Marlee realized he wasn’t trying to crawl out.
“I wanted you to pay for everything you stole from me—my family, my future. I tried to kill you. and myself that night after you left the hospital, but you swerved and ran off the road. You survived the crash. But maybe it was better that way. The scar on your face marked you, like a leper. You had to live your life with something that made you as ugly on the outside as you were on the inside.”
“You were in the car that almost hit me head-on?” she repeated dully. For so many years, she’d thought of it as divine retribution. Now she understood the crash that had scarred her had been no accident, but the work of a man crazed by guilt. The knowledge lifted a heavy burden she’d shouldered for far too long.
The truck began to slide as Earl deliberately started rocking back and forth. “But it all ends now,” he said. “Judgment day is finally here, and we’re going for that last ride together.”
Marlee struggled to get free of him as the truck began to slip down the incline, but his fingers clasped her wrist in a death grip. As the truck gathered momentum, she was dragged alongside, slipping along the icy ground. “Let me go!”
He gave her a peaceful smile but said nothing. His grip never wavered.
Marlee leaned back and pushed off with her feet against the pickup. The sudden force knocked her free of Earl’s grip.
She hit the ground rolling, and reached out with her hands to grab the brush to stop herself. Her arms were almost pulled out of their sockets, but she held on tight. As she clung to the brush, she saw Earl scrambling to get out of the pickup, without success. A second later, the vehicle carried the trapped man over the vertical drop, out of sight. Seconds went by, then there was a distant thump. An ex-plosion followed, rocking the ground, and flames leaped out from the canyon below.
She approached the edge slowly. Fifty feet below, Earl’s body, illuminated by the flames, lay twisted like a rag doll upon a pile of refrigerator-sized boulders. Turning away, she hurried back to her car, ignoring her own cuts and bruises. The man’s death, the hatred he’d harbored, had all been so pointless. Freed of her past at long last, her thoughts turned to Lucas. It was time to concentrate on the living.
She managed to get Nydia’s car back onto the road, and raced to the clinic. She prayed that she would reach Lucas in time and that there would be something that could save him. Breathless with fear and desperation, she wondered how she’d cope if he were to die. Shaking away momentary tears, Marlee tried not to think such thoughts. Fate couldn’t be so cruel as to rob her of love after all she’d been through to find it.
When she arrived at the clinic, she found Gabriel by his brother’s bedside. He glanced up at her, and then shook his head.
For a heart-stopping minute, she thought that Lucas was dead. Everything began to spin, and her knees almost buck-led.
“No, you misunderstand,” Gabriel said, grabbing her by the shoulders. “The doctors say we have to wait it out. Shadow was lucid long enough to tell me he was poisoned by corn-cockle seeds. The doctors told me how to treat the symptoms, but that’s all that can be done at this point.”
Marlee felt Lucas’s pulse. He was weak, and his breathing was shallow. Her knowledge of herbs told her that if he went into a coma, death would follow from respiratory arrest.
“He needs to be in a hospital,” she said.
“There’s no way to get him there. The road is completely blocked. It could be hours before weather permits a helicopter flight. And he’d be dead from exposure to the cold and climate in his condition before he could be carried over that rock slide to an ambulance on the other side,” Gabriel answered. “His only chance is right here in Four Winds.”
“Will you give me a moment alone with him?”
Gabriel looked at her, and with a heaviness of spirit she’d never seen in any of the Blackhorse brothers, he stood, and walked outside.
Marlee took out the raven carving from her pocket, then, taking Lucas’s hand, pressed it between their palms. She’d never believed in magic, nor trusted in the power of love, but now they were her only hope.
She closed her eyes and concentrated. She remembered what the peddler had said about the wish, and pleaded with all the strength of her yearning heart for the life of the only man she’d ever loved.
When she opened her eyes, Lucas remained still. There was no sign of improvement It hadn’t worked. She chided herself for ever thinking it could. But she wouldn’t give up, no matter what. Her gaze stayed on Lucas, tears streaming down her face. “Lucas, please find your way back to me. I can’t come to you, my love. You’ll have to find me. I’m here.” She pressed his hand to her heart and, as her tears moistened his fingertips, she felt him stir.
She watched him move again, afraid to even breathe. “It’s Marlee, I’m here. Fight with all your strength and find your way home, Lucas,” she whispered.
He opened his eyes slowly. “Hello, my heart,” he managed to croak in a weak voice. “I heard your voice calling me, guiding me back.” He squeezed her hand gently. “I’m here.”
“I love you,” she said past the enormous lump at her throat.
He smiled. “I know.” He picked up the carving of the raven that had dropped onto the blanket covering him. “What’s this doing here?”
She picked it up quickly. “It’s my good-luck charm,” she said. “I figured we needed all the help we could get.”
Hearing footsteps behind her, Marlee turned her head and saw Gabriel had returned. Relief was etched clearly on his face. “Let me talk to my brother. When I’m finished, you and I will have to h
ave a few words of our own. This isn’t over. Someone out there has gone to a lot of trouble to make our lives miserable, and now it’s our turn to return the favor.”
Marlee stood up and glanced down at Lucas. His eyes were filled with tenderness as he gazed at her.
“You’ll need to get some rest now,” she said softly, then looked at Gabriel. “Take it easy with him.”
“I’ll transport him to my house, and Tree will watch over him there. He’ll be safe. Nobody gets past my little brother.”
Thinking of the huge, youngest Blackhorse brother, Marlee nodded. “I have no doubt of that.”
As Gabriel sat down and began talking to Lucas, Marlee allowed herself one final glance. Lucas was getting stronger by the minute; she could see it. Knowing that he was going to be okay was all that really mattered to her now. She wasn’t sure if the carving had made the difference, or if it had been the power of love, or if it had all just been a coincidence. But in her heart, she knew her actions had sealed her fate. Lucas had heard her words pleading for his return, and before long he’d figure out how she tried to use the carving. It had been an act of desperation, one she wasn’t sure had worked, but it had also revealed the only secret she’d still kept from him. She wasn’t at all sure how he’d react when he realized that still another secret had continued to exist between them until now.
Marlee could try to tell him the truth, that she’d never really taken the peddler’s promise of one wish seriously until fear had forced her hand. Yet she wasn’t sure he’d ever understand or forgive her for not telling him about it.
She touched the scar on her face gingerly. It was now raised and tender, and she didn’t need a mirror to know that it was probably bloodred again. Marlee tilted down the rearview mirror and stared at her reflection, her eyes riveted on the scar. It wasn’t red, as she’d thought. If anything, it was less noticeable than usual. Yet inside, she felt weary and scarred in a different way. Although she’d come to terms with her past, some experiences left permanent scars that went so deep they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye.
