Run Wild With Me

by Sandra Chastain

  “Be careful, Andy!”

  Andrea, her gun in her hand, began to circle around, hoping to head the driver off. The woods were hot and airless, and perspiration rolled down her forehead and stung her eyes. Andrea stopped, listening for some indication of the direction her quarry was taking.

  Silence.

  Finally she heard a soft crackling of footsteps to her right. Someone was hiding in the thicket just ahead. Andrea worked her way toward the thick brush, her heart hammering in her throat. What in God’s name had ever made her think she could be a police officer? Finally she reached the over-grown area.

  “Come out with your hands up, and I won’t shoot!”

  “Andy!” Lewis stood up. “I thought you were our man!”

  “Damn! Where’d he go, Lewis?”

  “I don’t know. Holed up somewhere, maybe, if he hasn’t passed out from that lick on the head. Let’s pack it in until we can get some help.”

  When they came out of the woods, a bevy of cars were gathered around the crashed equipment hauler.

  “And nobody at the weigh station saw it come by?” Buck was talking with a heavyset older state trooper whom Andrea recognized as the major in charge.

  “That’s got to be the stolen equipment,” Ed Pinyon was saying. “No question about it.”

  “Don’t guess he came back this way, did he?” Lewis asked hopefully.

  “No.” Buck shook his head. “Did anybody get a good look at him?”

  Lewis shook his head. “All I can tell you is that he was tall and had a bloody forehead.”

  There was a spidery, bloodstained network of cracks in the windshield on the driver’s side. The glass wasn’t broken, but the blow had been hard enough to cause the driver grave injury.

  “Well,” Lewis added with a puzzled look, “I can’t figure where he came from. That thing’s too big to get through these backroads and bridges without either being seen or getting stuck somewhere.”

  “Maybe he had help,” Ed suggested. “But we don’t have any criminals around here, unless—” he gave a long pause—“the inside man is a newcomer, an outsider with special connections.”

  For a minute Andrea couldn’t believe what she’d heard.

  “We just missed the hiding place, Ed,” Buck interjected sharply. A second patrol car had appeared, and the officer was directing traffic around the crashed hauler. “Andy, give us a hand over here.”

  A horrible sense of déjà vu washed over Andrea. She shook off Buck’s motion and stared at Ed in shock. “I hope that you don’t mean what I think you do, Ed. Because the only newcomer around here is Sam Farley.”

  “Exactly my point, Andrea. What do we know about the man?” Ed turned to Buck. “Don’t you think you ought to check him out, Chief?”

  “But,” Lewis began, “Andrea already—”

  “Knows enough about Sam Farley,” Andrea interrupted, “to agree to marry him.”

  There was a shocked “Andy?” by Buck and Ed at the same time. Then silence.

  “Ah, has anybody called the wrecker?” Lewis broke the silence, directing their attention back to the accident. Though Andrea knew he didn’t understand what she was doing, he was willing to go along for the moment.

  “I did,” Buck answered, “but they don’t want the truck moved until the FBI gets here.” He took Andrea’s arm and turned her toward the patrol car. “You get on back to town and check out the picnic. With the thief loose, I don’t want anybody in town to decide to get up a search party.”

  “But, Buck,” Andrea protested, whipping her head around to look back at Ed.

  “Now, Andrea. We’ll talk later.” Buck stumbled on his cast, but his tone didn’t allow any argument. He wasn’t going to let her have this out with Ed. “You’re still the chief of police, Andrea Fleming, and you’re on duty.”

  Buck turned back to the others with a look that told them he was ready to do battle with anybody who disagreed. “As for you, Ed,” he growled, “I think you’d better get to the picnic. You have a speech to make, don’t you? Though I’m certain you’ve already said enough.”

  After making a point of telling Lewis that she’d talk to him later, Andrea left the scene of the accident. She spent an hour in the police station, answering the phone and reassuring the residents that there was no manhunt for a desperate criminal.

  Ed’s insinuation that Sam might be involved in the theft of the machinery kept going round and round in her mind. She couldn’t forget that Sam had once been accused of a crime. Not telling Buck about Sam’s past weighed heavily on her conscience. Loving Sam had made her dishonest, and she didn’t like the feeling.

  She debated about calling Sam, but she didn’t want him involved until she’d straightened out the situation. She couldn’t tell him what had happened. She didn’t want to tell the truth, and she couldn’t lie. This morning she had to be Chief Andrea Fleming of the Arcadia Police Department.

  Sam put the finishing touches on the swing, added a couple of matching bright pillows on the seat of the rocking chairs, stood, and looked around. Except for two broken steps leading up to the porch, he was satisfied. What he was seeing matched the picture he’d carried around all those years in his mind. All he needed now was lemonade and cookies—and Andrea.

  He’d tried to reach Andrea all morning. Agnes had told him that she and Buck had gone over to Cottonboro on police business. She hadn’t called him, and he couldn’t help but be uneasy. What kind of police business would they be involved in on the Fourth of July? The picnic would be getting started shortly, and Sam admitted that he was looking forward to it. But he’d wait until he heard from Andrea.

  In the meantime he’d fix the broken steps and put a coat of paint on them. He measured the board and started toward the back where the tools and equipment that he’d borrowed from Louise Roberts were stored. In the last three weeks business had really taken off, and he was saving all his money for the taxes.

  Ten years before, when he’d started his odyssey, he’d promised himself that he’d earn his own way wherever he went. He’d accomplished that and more, sending money back to the little bank in South Carolina where he’d started his original account when he’d gone into the marines. Once he’d paid his mother’s final doctors and hospital bills, he’d been nearly broke. But, with the help of Otis and Brad, he’d managed the repairs on his house and traded out a job for the down payment on the used truck parked at the back door. At the rate he was picking up local work, it looked as if he might be able to pay off the taxes before the deadline. Andrea would be surprised.

  Sam took the sawhorses and arranged them so that the old door he’d found in the barn made a worktable. He laid a piece of lumber on the platform and measured off the proper length for the step, reached for his electric saw, and turned it on. The noise of the motor concealed the sound of the approaching car.

  Ed Pinyon caught him by surprise, or Ed would never have knocked him down. Though stunned by the blow, Sam managed to switch off the electric saw and drop it to the ground as he staggered to his feet.

  “What the hell, Pinyon?”

  “Andrea Fleming is mine, Farley. I’ve waited for her for six years. You aren’t going to marry her, no matter what she says. I won’t be made the laughingstock of the county by some no-account drifter.”

  Sam blinked, unable to believe the man standing before him. “Marry Andrea?” Ed Pinyon must be drunk. What was wrong with the man? There was a desperation in his eyes that made Sam take him seriously. He’d seen that look before—when he’d been in jail.

  When Ed came at him this time, he stepped out of the way, catching the force of the blow on his shoulder. He wasn’t hurt, but already unsteady from the knock on his head, he was unable to prevent himself from falling. This time he hit the ground. Ed turned around and came charging back. Sam whirled away, catching his forehead against the blade of the saw as he tried to roll out of reach of Ed’s foot. The last thing Sam remembered was the sight of the sun dappling through t
he leaves of the large chinaberry tree above him.

  When Sam came to, Ed was gone, leaving him with a bloody forehead from his collision with the sawblade and a giant-size headache that echoed behind his eyeballs as he washed the crusted blood away. He didn’t know where Ed got the idea that he and Andrea were getting married, but he could understand the man’s reaction. He’d felt like taking a swing at Ed a time or two himself. Still, marriage? He hadn’t dared verbalize the idea more than one time. Andrea hadn’t liked it.

  He rubbed his chin and grinned. That he’d been decked by somebody like Ed Pinyon was hard for him to believe. There’d been a time when he would have reduced Ed to nothing for even thinking of threatening him. But Andrea had changed that, and him too.

  Suddenly he wanted to hear Andrea’s voice.

  Sam went to the phone. “Vera, what’s happening?”

  “I wondered where you were.” Vera told him about the chase and the wreck over on the interstate.

  “Andrea,” he interrupted, his heart in his throat. “Is Andrea all right?”

  “Sure. She’s on her way over to the lake to check out the picnic. Official duty, you know.”

  “Damn. Why didn’t she call me?”

  “She tried, but when you didn’t answer, she thought you might have gone on ahead. If you hurry, you ought to be able to get there by the time she does.”

  “Thanks, Vera. If she checks in again, I’m on my way.”

  “After he cracked his head, the crook took off running into the woods. Disappeared completely,” Ed was saying to a group of wide-eyed men by the corner of the platform where the political speeches would be delivered.

  Andrea avoided Ed as she made her rounds, keeping herself visible. After what Ed had said earlier, she was uneasy. She hadn’t thought he would be so upset about Sam and her. Apparently she’d been wrong.

  She wiped her face with one of Buck’s large white handkerchiefs. She looked longingly at the youngsters splashing noisily in the lake, wishing she could jump in and wash away some of the tightness in her body.

  By now the crowd seemed unusually tense, too, gathering in little groups under the hundred-year-old oaks hung with Spanish moss. The behind-the-pavilion refreshments, for men only, had been doing a big business, and Andrea wished Buck would hurry and get there. Something was going to happen—she could feel it.

  She was almost glad she hadn’t been able to get Sam on the phone. Andrea hoped that he’d stay away. Her crack about marriage had popped out from sheer anger at Ed’s suggestion that Sam might be involved in the machinery thefts. There was no way she’d believe that, and she wouldn’t let anybody else think it either.

  Halfway back to the main picnic area she heard a hush in the crowd that alerted her to trouble. Something was wrong. She knew it before she reached the circle of men surrounding … Sam?

  “What did I tell you?” Ed was asking derisively. “Does the man have a busted head or not?”

  “Damnation,” one man chortled, “if we don’t have the thief right here.”

  Another spoke up. “Yeah, just like you said, Ed. No wonder he could fix up that old house and buy a truck so quick.”

  “Call Andy!” voiced a third.

  “Not Andy, you fool.” Ed’s voice came clear. “Why would she arrest her lover? She’s probably been protecting him all along. How else could that loader have been hidden around here without us knowing it?”

  In the center of the jeering men stood a grim Sam Farley. Andrea started forward, then came to a stop when she saw the angry red marks on his forehead.

  The crowd suddenly parted as they caught sight of Andrea striding intently across the shaded clearing.

  Andrea wanted to scream at Ed. What was he trying to do? Sam couldn’t have had anything to do with what had happened. “What are you doing, Ed?”

  “Looks like I’m doing your job,” he said maliciously. “Finding the man who was driving the stolen truck over on the interstate. What happened to your face, Farley?”

  A smattering of conversation rose, then died down again.

  “Why bother asking?” a voice jeered from the crowd. “He’s the one. Arrest ’im, Andy.”

  “What’s going on here?” Sam asked quietly.

  Andrea raised her hand to protest the absurdity of the charge. Where was Buck? She wasn’t qualified to handle this kind of situation. The last thing she wanted was to see Sam accused of a crime in front of the entire population of Arcadia. She knew he couldn’t be guilty, and so did they, if they stopped to think about it. But with Ed inciting the crowd, she didn’t know what might happen. What on earth had happened to Sam’s face?

  “That’s enough, Ed.” Andrea crossed the open space to stand at Sam’s side. “The rest of you break it up. Sam, there’s been an accident involving a stolen front-end loader over on the interstate.”

  “I don’t understand. What does that mean to me?” His quiet question didn’t cover the narrowing of his brows into a frown.

  “The thief busted his head on the windshield,” one of the men called out, “and run off. Andy’s supposed to be looking for him.”

  “Yeah, and it looks like she’s found him, huh, Andy?”

  Ed looked from one person to the other, nodding his head in satisfaction. “What do you think he’s going to say, Andrea, that he’s the crook? The evidence is there, clear as the marks on his forehead. Are you going to do your duty and arrest him?”

  Andrea gasped. “Arrest Sam?”

  “That’s what a police chief does, Andrea—arrest criminals. You wanted to do your daddy’s job. Now do it.”

  “I don’t suppose it would matter if I told you that I haven’t done anything, would it?” Sam was looking at Andrea, not at the crowd.

  “Maybe he has an alibi,” a female voice came from behind the circle of men.

  “Well, Farley,” Ed said with a knowing smile, “tell us where you were about ten-thirty this morning.”

  “You tell them where I was, Ed,” Sam answered, even more softly. “You were there.” Sam continued to look at Andrea. Once before he’d seen the same kind of expression that he was seeing in her eyes and heard this same kind of anger from a crowd. It was happening again, except this time, though she didn’t know it, the doubt was in the eyes of the one person in the world he cared about.

  There was a catch of desperation in Andrea’s voice that she couldn’t hide as she spoke. “An equipment hauler carrying a stolen John Deere loader crashed over on the freeway, Sam. The driver crashed his head against the windshield and escaped.”

  “I see.”

  “Talk to us, Sam,” Andrea said somberly. “Tell them what happened to your head.” Andrea knew now what it meant to have your life flash before your eyes. No matter what happened, everything was ruined. Unless she could get Sam away from the crowd, they were going to convict him all over again. She had to do something quickly. No matter what her heart and mind told her, she was still a police officer sworn to do her duty.

  This couldn’t be happening. Sam saw the conflicting emotions on Andrea’s face. He couldn’t do anything but stand and wait. Ed Pinyon had won, and Sam hadn’t known they were involved in a war. It didn’t matter to him what the others thought—only what Andrea thought. Nothing he could say was going to make any difference. Still, he had to try.

  “I don’t suppose you plan to say anything helpful, Pinyon, like telling the truth about what happened to my head, do you?”

  “Me?” Ed’s laugh was mocking, an expression of his disbelief at the absurdity of Sam’s statement. “Why would I try to help you? The evidence is right here, for all the world to see.”

  “No?” Sam agreed, drawing his eyes away from Andrea. “I can’t say that I’d do anything differently myself if I were you. I don’t know anything about any heavy equipment, Andrea, but I can see that nothing I can say is going to matter now.” He turned and walked slowly to the police car parked at the entrance to the park.

  “Wait, Sam!” Andrea started a
fter him.

  Madge came charging into the circle and shook Ed’s arm angrily. “Ed, you idiot. Why are you doing this?” She ran after Andrea. “You can’t arrest Sam.”

  “I know,” Andrea agreed, “but I’ve got to get him away from here before this crowd gets out of control.”

  Andrea looked around and heard the growing murmur of unrest in the crowd. She didn’t have any choice. Ed’s followers were beginning to sound like a lynch mob in an old Western movie. If she was going to protect Sam, she’d have to put him under arrest until she could get to the bottom of this.

  Andrea unclipped the billy club from her belt. “Out of the way, men, out of the way.”

  After a few carefully placed jabs, the crowd began to scatter. They realized that she was serious. “Get in the car, Sam—quick. I’m going to have to arrest you—for your own protection.”

  He stared at her sadly for a moment. “I know.” He got into the backseat of the patrol car, staring straight ahead as she closed the door and walked quickly around to the driver’s side.

  “We’ll get you out before dark,” Louise Roberts promised Sam through the open window beside him.

  “I’m ashamed of you, Andrea Fleming,” another neighbor said in disgust.

  “Fool women,” Ed’s voice rose above the rest. “What else can you expect? He’s got them all hypnotized.”

  Andrea reached Buck on the CB and told him what had happened. All the way back to town she wished that the highway would open up and swallow them, car and all. She waited for Sam to say something in his defense. He didn’t. She didn’t realize she was crying until the tears dropped from her face onto her shirt.

  “I’m so sorry, Sam. I know you didn’t do it. It was that wild crowd of Ed’s. They’d had too much to drink, and then you came in with your head injured. Just tell me what happened so that I have something to work with.”

  Sam sat staring straight ahead, tight-lipped and silent. He didn’t answer. The look on Andrea’s face and the fact that she’d arrested him were statement enough of her belief. He should have known better. Trust was just a fancy word that applied to other people.